The stellar halo in Local Group Hestia simulations III. Chemical abundance relations for accreted and in-situ stars

TL;DR

This study uses cosmological simulations to analyze the chemical abundance patterns of accreted and in-situ stars in the Local Group, revealing distinct chemo-kinematic signatures that inform galaxy assembly history.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the chemical and kinematic differences between accreted and in-situ stars using detailed chemo-chrono-kinematic analysis from HESTIA simulations.

Findings

Accreted debris are chemically distinct from dwarf galaxies.

Inner halo stars show abundance gradients and formation history clues.

Metallicity and abundance patterns vary with stellar origin and orbital properties.

Abstract

Since the chemical abundances of stars are the fossil records of the physical conditions in galaxies, they provide the key information for recovering the assembly history of galaxies. In this work, we explore the chemo-chrono-kinematics of accreted and in-situ stars, by analyzing six M31/MW analogues from the HESTIA suite of cosmological hydrodynamics zoom-in simulations of the Local Group. We found that the merger debris are chemically distinct from the survived dwarf galaxies. The mergers debris have abundances expected for stars originating from dwarfs that had their star formation activity quenched at early times. Accreted stellar haloes, including individual debris, reveal abundance gradients in the ELz, where the most metal-rich stars have formed in the inner parts of the disrupted systems before the merger and mainly contribute to the central regions of the hosts. Therefore, we suggest that abundance measurements in the inner MW will allow constraining better the parameters of building blocks of the MW stellar halo. The MDFs of the individual debris show several peaks and the majority of debris have lower metallicity than the in-situ stars for Lz>0, while non-rotating and retrograde accreted stars are similar to the in-situ. Prograde accreted stars show a prominent knee in the [Fe/H]-[Mg/Fe] plane while the retrograde stars typically deposit to a high-[Mg/Fe] sequence. We found that the metal-poor stars ([Fe/H]<-1) of the HESTIA galaxies exhibit between zero to 80 km/s net rotation which is consistent with the Aurora population. At higher metallicities, we detect a sharp transition (spin-up) from the turbulent phase to a disk-like rotation. Mergers debris are similar in the [Fe/H]-[Mg/Fe] plane. However, combining a set of abundances allows to capture chemical patterns corresponding to different debris, which are the most prominent as a function of stellar age.