Exploring the diversity and similarity of radially anisotropic Milky Way-like stellar haloes: implications for disrupted dwarf galaxy searches

Understand

We investigate the properties of mergers comparable to the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE) using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies.

• The merger progenitors span an order of magnitude in their peak stellar mass ($3\times10^8<M_{\star}/\rm{M}_{\odot}<4\times10^9$) and include both rotation and pressure-supported galaxies ($0.10<D/T<0.77$).
• In a minority of cases, the GSE-like debris is comprised of stars from more than one merger progenitor.
• However, there is a close similarity in their chemodynamical properties and the triaxial shapes of their debris, and so it is not always possible to distinguish them.