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The mass-metallicity relation is a fundamental galaxy scaling law that has been extended to the faintest systems in the Local Group. We show that the small scatter in this relation, which has been used to argue against tidal mass loss in Local Group satellites, is consistent with the level of disruption in the Auriga simulations. For every accreted system in Auriga, we compute stellar masses and metallicities two ways: considering the total system (bound + lost material) and only considering the progenitor. Accreted systems in Auriga have a tight relation between total stellar mass and metallicity, with scatter at a fixed stellar mass driven by age. When only considering the progenitor, the tidally evolved mass-metallicity relation has similar scatter (\\(\\sim\\)0.27 dex) as observed for the Local Group satellites (\\(\\sim\\)0.23 dex). Satellites that lie above the relation have experienced substantial mass loss and typically have low metallicity for their total stellar mass. Even satellites that fall exactly on the evolved relation can lose over half of their stellar mass. Only satellites substantially below the evolved relation are reliably intact. Based on their offset from the observed relation, we predict which Milky Way and M31 satellites have tidal tails waiting to be discovered.

Estimates for the total number of Milky Way (MW) satellites are often generated from a combination of the observed number of satellites in surveys, adjustments for the completeness of those surveys, and theoretical expectations from halo assembly modelling. One of the features of this modelling is disruption by the MW stellar disc. We examine the effect of degrees of disc disruption on inferred satellite counts, by means of an N-body simulation of a MW-mass halo plus a toy model for this disruption. We use a fictional all-sky survey to show that high resilience to disc disruption predicts small populations of satellites that are radially very concentrated around the central galaxy and are hosted by massive subhaloes, while low resilience predicts many more satellites with a less concentrated radial distribution and hosted within less massive subhaloes. We show that the most massive subhaloes are particularly susceptible to disruption due to their radial orbits, and in their putative absence galaxy formation must occur in lower mass haloes that have a shallower radial number density profile. We then demonstrate this phenomenon for a combination of the Pan-STARRS and DES surveys. It is therefore necessary to account for uncertainty in the disc disruption radius when making predictions for MW satellite distributions.

We present the new ARTEMIS Emulator suite of high resolution (baryon mass of \\(2.23 \\times 10^{4}\\) \\(h^{-1}\\)M\\(_{\\odot}\\)) zoom-in simulations of Milky Way mass systems. Here, three haloes from the original ARTEMIS sample have been rerun multiple times, systematically varying parameters for the stellar feedback model, the density threshold for star formation, the reionisation redshift and the assumed warm dark matter (WDM) particle mass (assuming a thermal relic). From these simulations emulators are trained for a wide range of statistics that allow for fast predictions at combinations of parameters not originally sampled, running in \\(\\sim 1\\)ms (a factor of \\(\\sim 10^{11}\\) faster than the simulations). In this paper we explore the dependence of the central haloes' stellar mass on the varied parameters, finding the stellar feedback parameters to be the most important. When constraining the parameters to match the present-day stellar mass halo mass relation inferred from abundance matching we find that there is a strong degeneracy in the stellar feedback parameters, corresponding to a freedom in formation time of the stellar component for a fixed halo assembly history. We additionally explore the dependence of the satellite stellar mass function, where it is found that variations in stellar feedback, the reionisation redshift and the WDM mass all have a significant effect. The presented emulators are a powerful tool which allows for fundamentally new ways of analysing and interpreting cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. Crucially, allowing their free (subgrid) parameters to be varied and marginalised, leading to more robust constraints and predictions.

In the conventional approach to decomposing a rotation curve into a set of contributions from mass model components, the measurements of the rotation curve at different radii are taken to be independent. It is clear, however, that radial correlations are present in such data, for instance (but not only) because the orbital speed depends on the mass distribution at all (or, minimally, inner) radii. We adopt a very simple parametric form for a covariance matrix and constrain its parameters using Gaussian process regression. Applied to the rotation curve of the Milky Way, this suggests the presence of correlations between neighbouring rotation curve points with amplitudes \\(<10\\,\\mathrm{km}\\,\\mathrm{s}^{-1}\\) over length scales of \\(1.5\\)-\\(2.5\\,\\mathrm{kpc}\\) regardless of the assumed dark halo component. We show that accounting for such covariance can result in a \\(\\sim 50\\) per cent lower total mass estimate for the Milky Way than when it is neglected, and that the statistical uncertainty associated with the covariance is comparable to or exceeds the total systematic uncertainty budget. Our findings motivate including more detailed treatment of rotation curve covariance in future analyses.

There is increasing evidence that a substantial fraction of Milky Way satellite galaxies align in a rotationally-supported plane of satellites, a rare configuration in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. It has been suggested that other Milky Way substructures (namely young halo globular clusters and stellar/gaseous streams) similarly tend to align with this plane, accordingly dubbed the Vast Polar Structure (VPOS). Using systemic proper motions inferred from Gaia data, we find that globular cluster orbital poles are not clustered in the VPOS direction, though the population with the highest VPOS membership fraction is the young halo clusters (~30%). We additionally provide a current census of stellar streams, including new streams discovered using the Dark Energy Survey and Gaia datasets, and find that stellar stream normals are also not clustered in the direction of the VPOS normal. We also find that, based on orbit modeling, there is a likely association between NGC 3201 and the Gj\"{o}ll stellar stream and that, based on its orbital pole, NGC 4147 is likely not a Sagittarius globular cluster. That the Milky Way's accreted globular clusters and streams do not align in the same planar configuration as its satellites suggests that the plane of satellites is either a particularly stable orbital configuration or a population of recently accreted satellites. Neither of these explanations is particularly likely in light of other recent studies, leaving the plane of satellites problem as one of the more consequential open problems in galaxy formation and cosmology.

In a hierarchically formed Universe, galaxies accrete smaller systems that tidally disrupt as they evolve in the host's potential. We present a complete catalogue of disrupting galaxies accreted onto Milky Way-mass haloes from the Auriga suite of cosmological magnetohydrodynamic zoom-in simulations. We classify accretion events as intact satellites, stellar streams, or phase-mixed systems based on automated criteria calibrated to a visually classified sample, and match accretions to their counterparts in haloes re-simulated at higher resolution. Most satellites with a bound progenitor at the present day have lost substantial amounts of stellar mass -- 67 per cent have \\(f_\\text{bound} < 0.97\\) (our threshold of lost stellar mass to no longer be considered intact), while 53 per cent satisfy a more stringent \\(f_\\text{bound} < 0.8\\). Streams typically outnumber intact systems, contribute a smaller fraction of overall accreted stars, and are substantial contributors at intermediate distances from the host centre (\\(\\sim\\)0.1 to \\(\\sim\\)0.7\\(R_\\text{200m}\\), or \\(\\sim\\)35 to \\(\\sim\\)250 kpc for the Milky Way). We also identify accretion events that disrupt to form streams around massive intact satellites instead of the main host. Streams are more likely than intact or phase-mixed systems to have experienced preprocessing, suggesting this mechanism is important for setting disruption rates around Milky Way-mass haloes. All of these results are preserved across different simulation resolutions, though we do find some hints that satellites disrupt more readily at lower resolution. The Auriga haloes suggest that disrupting satellites surrounding Milky Way-mass galaxies are the norm and that a wealth of tidal features waits to be uncovered in upcoming surveys.

Stars that contain only trace amounts of elements heavier than helium, referred to as having low \"metallicity\", preserve the chemical fingerprints of the first generation of stars and supernovae. In the Milky Way, the lowest metallicity stars show an extreme over-abundance of carbon relative to other elements, which has been hypothesized to be a unique result of the first low-energy supernovae. However, the origin of this signature has remained a mystery, since no such stars have been discovered in the ancient dwarf galaxies where they are thought to have formed. Here, we present observations of a star in the >10 billion year old ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Pictor II, that shows the lowest iron and calcium abundances outside the Milky Way (<1/43,000th solar and ~1/160,000th solar), with a factor of >3000x relative carbon enhancement. As the first unambiguous second-generation star in a relic dwarf galaxy, this object demonstrates that carbon-enhanced second-generation stars can originate in primordial small-scale systems. This star supports the hypothesis that carbon-enhancement is produced by low-energy-supernovae, since the yields of energetic supernovae are harder to retain in small-scale environments. This key local signature of chemical enrichment by the first stars traces a regime inaccessible to current high-redshift observations, which cannot detect the early enrichment of the smallest galaxies.

Galaxies like the Milky Way are surrounded by complex populations of satellites at all stages of tidal disruption. In this paper, we present a dynamical study of the disrupting satellite galaxies in the Auriga simulations that are orbiting 28 distinct Milky Way-mass hosts across three resolutions. We find that the satellite galaxy populations are highly disrupted. The majority of satellites that remain fully intact at present day were accreted recently without experiencing more than one pericentre (\\(n_{\\rm peri} \\lesssim 1\\)) and have large apocentres (\\(r_{\\rm apo} \\gtrsim 200\\) kpc) and pericentres (\\(r_{\\rm peri} \\gtrsim 50\\) kpc). The remaining satellites have experienced significant tidal disruption and, given full knowledge of the system, would be classified as stellar streams. We find stellar streams in Auriga across the range of pericentres and apocentres of the known Milky Way dwarf galaxy streams and, interestingly, overlapping significantly with the Milky Way intact satellite population. We find no significant change in satellite orbital distributions across resolution. However, we do see substantial halo-to-halo variance of \\((r_\\text{peri}, r_\\text{apo})\\) distributions across host galaxies, as well as a dependence of satellite orbits on host halo mass - systems disrupt at larger pericentres and apocentres in more massive hosts. Our results suggest that either cosmological simulations (including, but not limited to, Auriga) are disrupting satellites far too readily, or that the Milky Way's satellites are more disrupted than current imaging surveys have revealed. Future observing facilities and careful mock observations of these systems will be key to revealing the nature of this apparent discrepancy.

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a Milky Way (MW) satellite that is massive enough to gravitationally attract the MW disc and inner halo, causing significant motion of the inner MW with respect to the outer halo. In this work, we probe this interaction by constructing a sample of 9,866 blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars with radial velocities from the DESI spectroscopic survey out to 120 kpc from the Galactic centre. This is the largest spectroscopic set of BHB stars in the literature to date, and it contains four times more stars with Galactocentric distances beyond 50 kpc than previous BHB catalogues. Using the DESI BHB sample combined with SDSS BHBs, we measure the bulk radial velocity of stars in the outer halo and observe that the velocity in the Southern Galactic hemisphere is different by 3.7\\(\\sigma\\) from the North. Modelling the projected velocity field shows that its dipole component is directed at a point 22 degrees away from the LMC along its orbit, which we interpret as the travel direction of the inner MW. The velocity field includes a monopole term that is -24 km/s, which we refer to as compression velocity. This velocity is significantly larger than predicted by the current models of the MW and LMC interaction. This work uses DESI data from its first two years of observations, but we expect that with upcoming DESI data releases, the sample of BHB stars will increase and our ability to measure the MW-LMC interaction will improve significantly.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Milky Way Survey (DESI MWS) will explore the assembly history of the Milky Way by characterising remnants of ancient dwarf galaxy accretion events and improving constraints on the distribution of dark matter in the outer halo. We present mock catalogues that reproduce the selection criteria of MWS and the format of the final MWS data set. These catalogues can be used to test methods for quantifying the properties of stellar halo substructure and reconstructing the Milky Way's accretion history with the MWS data, including the effects of halo-to-halo variance. The mock catalogues are based on a phase-space kernel expansion technique applied to star particles in the Auriga suite of six high-resolution \\(\\Lambda\\)CDM magneto-hydrodynamic zoom-in simulations. They include photometric properties (and associated errors) used in DESI target selection and the outputs of the MWS spectral analysis pipeline (radial velocity, metallicity, surface gravity, and temperature). They also include information from the underlying simulation, such as the total gravitational potential and information on the progenitors of accreted halo stars. We discuss how the subset of halo stars observable by MWS in these simulations corresponds to their true content and properties. These mock Milky Ways have rich accretion histories, resulting in a large number of substructures that span the whole stellar halo out to large distances and have substantial overlap in the space of orbital energy and angular momentum.