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Observing the Stellar Halo of Andromeda in Cosmological Simulations: The AURIGA2PANDAS Pipeline

Thomas, Guillaume F.; Martin, Nicolas F.; Fattahi, Azadeh; Ibata, Rodrigo A.; Helly, John; McConnachie, Alan W.; Frenk, Carlos; Gómez, Facundo A.; Grand, Robert J.J.; Gwyn, Stephen; Mackey, Dougal; Marinacci, Federico; Pakmor, Rüdiger

Observing the Stellar Halo of Andromeda in Cosmological Simulations: The AURIGA2PANDAS Pipeline Thumbnail


Authors

Guillaume F. Thomas

Nicolas F. Martin

Rodrigo A. Ibata

Alan W. McConnachie

Carlos Frenk

Facundo A. Gómez

Robert J.J. Grand

Stephen Gwyn

Dougal Mackey

Federico Marinacci

Rüdiger Pakmor



Abstract

We present a direct comparison of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS) observations of the stellar halo of M31 with the stellar halos of six galaxies from the Auriga simulations. We process the simulated halos through the Auriga2PAndAS pipeline and create PAndAS-like mocks that fold in all observational limitations of the survey data (foreground contamination from the Milky Way stars, incompleteness of the stellar catalogs, photometric uncertainties, etc.). This allows us to study the survey data and the mocks in the same way and generate directly comparable density maps and radial density profiles. We show that the simulations are overall compatible with the observations. Nevertheless, some systematic differences exist, such as a preponderance for metal-rich stars in the mocks. While these differences could suggest that M31 had a different accretion history or has a different mass compared with the simulated systems, it is more likely a consequence of an underquenching of the star formation history of galaxies, related to the resolution of the Auriga simulations. The direct comparison enabled by our approach offers avenues to improve our understanding of galaxy formation as they can help pinpoint the observable differences between observations and simulations. Ideally, this approach will be further developed through an application to other stellar halo simulations. To facilitate this step, we release the pipeline to generate the mocks, along with the six mocks presented and used in this contribution.

Citation

Thomas, G. F., Martin, N. F., Fattahi, A., Ibata, R. A., Helly, J., McConnachie, A. W., …Pakmor, R. (2021). Observing the Stellar Halo of Andromeda in Cosmological Simulations: The AURIGA2PANDAS Pipeline. Astrophysical Journal, 910(2), Article 92. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abdfd2

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 22, 2021
Online Publication Date Mar 30, 2021
Publication Date Apr 1, 2021
Deposit Date Jul 22, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 30, 2022
Journal Astrophysical Journal
Print ISSN 0004-637X
Electronic ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher American Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 910
Issue 2
Article Number 92
DOI https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abdfd2
Related Public URLs https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.00010

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Copyright Statement
This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in The Astrophysical Journal. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version
derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abdfd2





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