Rise of the forsaken relics: connecting present-day stellar streams and phase-mixed galaxies to the Epoch of Reionization
Aritra Kundu, Robyn Sanderson, Adam Lidz, Pratik J. Gandhi, Andrew Wetzel, Robert Feldmann, Nondh Panithanpaisal, Jasjeev Singh, Michael Boylan-Kolchin

TL;DR
This study uses FIRE-2 simulations to show that disrupted galaxies significantly impact the inferred properties of early galaxies, improving constraints on the low-mass end of the stellar mass and UV luminosity functions during reionization.
Contribution
It highlights the importance of including disrupted galaxies in reconstructions of early galaxy populations, reducing biases and uncertainties in the low-mass galaxy regime.
Findings
Disrupted galaxies contribute up to 50% of stellar mass at z=6-9.
Including all progenitors improves SMF/UVLF normalization by 2-3 times.
Neglecting disrupted systems underestimates faint galaxy contributions to reionization.
Abstract
The `near-far' approach to studying reionization leverages the star formation histories of the Milky Way (MW) or Local Group (LG) galaxies, derived from resolved photometry, to infer the low-mass/faint-end of the stellar mass functions (SMFs) or the ultraviolet luminosity functions (UVLFs) of high-redshift galaxies (), beyond the current JWST detection limits (). Previous works considered only intact low-mass galaxies in the MW and LG, neglecting disrupted galaxies such as stellar streams and phase-mixed objects. Using the FIRE-2 simulations, we show that these disrupted galaxies contribute up to of the total stellar mass budget of the proto-MW/LG at . Including all the progenitors of these disrupted galaxies improves the normalization of the recovered SMFs/UVLFs by factors of and reduces the halo-to-halo variation…
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