The accreted stellar haloes of Milky Way-mass galaxies as a probe of the nature of the dark matter

Galactic stellar haloes are largely composed of the remnants of galaxies accreted during the assembly of their host galaxies, and hence their properties reflect the mass spectrum and post-accretion evolution of their satellites. As the nature of dark matter (DM) can affect both, we explore how the properties of the accreted stellar component vary across cold (CDM), warm (WDM) and self-interacting (SIDM) models. We do this by studying accreted stellar populations around eight MW-mass haloes using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations based on the EAGLE galaxy formation model, in which we find that the accreted stellar mass remains similar across models. Contrary to WDM, which only presents minor differences relative to CDM, the distribution of accreted stars in SIDM changes significantly within 0.05R200 (10 kpc). The central density reduces to $\langle \rho ^{\mathrm{SIDM}}_{\mathrm{exsitu}} / \rho ^{\mathrm{CDM}}_{\mathrm{exsitu}} \rangle = 0.3$ and has a shallower radial dependence, with logarithmic density slopes of 〈αSIDM〉 = −1.4 vs 〈αCDM〉 = −1.7. Additionally, stars are on more tangential orbits than their CDM counterparts, with a change in the velocity anisotropy of 〈Δβ〉 = −0.2. Finally, SIDM stellar haloes have the largest number and prominence of overdensities in radius vs radial velocity space. This is due to a combination of shorter stellar halo progenitor merging timescales and shallower host potentials, with the former resulting in less time for dynamical friction and radialisation to operate. In summary, we show that the phase-space structure of Galactic stellar haloes encode key information that can be used to distinguish and rule out different DM models.