# The accreted stellar halo as a window on halo assembly in L* galaxies

## TL;DR

This study uses mock stellar halos to link the assembly history of Milky Way-like galaxies with their stellar halo properties, revealing distinct growth patterns and satellite populations based on halo accretion events.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel framework connecting halo assembly history with stellar halo characteristics using mock data, highlighting different growth modes and satellite features.

## Key findings

- Rich stellar halos are associated with early, high-mass ratio accretion events.
- Poor stellar halos result from slow growth with recent minor mergers.
- Milky Way features align with predictions for poor, concentrated halos.

## Abstract

Theory and observations agree that the accreted stellar halos (ASHs) of Milky Way-like galaxies display significant scatter. I take advantage of this stochasticity to invert the link between halo assembly history (HAH) and ASH, using mock ASHs corresponding to 750 $\Lambda$CDM HAHs, sharing a final virial mass of $M_{h}(z=0)=10^{12.25}M_\odot$. Hosts with poor/rich ASHs assemble following orthogonal growth-patterns. Hosts with rich ASHs experience accretion events (AEs) with high virial mass ratios (HVMRs, $M_s/M_h\gtrsim 0.1$) at $0.5\lesssim z_{infall}\lesssim1.5$, in a phase of fast growth. This maximizes the accreted stellar mass under the condition these satellites are disrupted by $z=0$. At similar times, hosts with poor ASHs grow slowly through minor mergers, with only very recent HVMR AEs: this results in a globally more abundant satellite population and in distinctive surviving massive satellites (stellar mass $\log M_{s,*}/M_\odot\gtrsim 9$). Several properties of the Milky Way are in agreement with the predictions of this framework for hosts with poor, concentrated ASHs, including: i) the recent infall of Sagittarius and Magellanic Clouds, ii) the likely higher-than-average concentration of its dark halo, iii) the signatures of fast chemical enrichment of a sizable fraction of its halo stellar populations.