Speaker
Description
Dwarf satellite populations around MW-mass galaxies are closely tied to the formation and assembly history of their host haloes and central galaxies. Their abundance and properties are the combined result of continuous accretion of new satellites, disruption and merging of current satellites and numerous environmental interactions leading to quenching and morphological transformations. To explore the fate of such satellites, We use results from the PARADIGM project, a suite of zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations of MW-mass haloes evolving the same initial conditions (ICs) with two different simulation codes and galaxy formation models, VINTERGATAN and IllustrisTNG. The ICs are generated with the code GenetIC, which can perform `genetic' modifications to the ICs thus altering the formation, assembly and merger histories of a given halo in a controlled and systematic manner. Comparing between the two galaxy formation models, with their different emphases on resolved ISM and SF modelling and recovery of global observed galaxy properties, and haloes of varying assembly histories, allows us to understand what physical processes are crucial in establishing satellite populations around MW-mass haloes. We investigate how the abundance of satellites around a MW-mass halo evolves over cosmic time and over what timescales they are disrupted, and find similar trends between the two sets of simulations with satellite abundance primarily driven by halo assembly history. We also explore when and where present-day surviving satellites were quenched, finding similar populations of low-mass satellites that quenched early, mostly outside the halo, and more massive ones that quenched later and within the halo.
