Thousands of Milky Ways: galaxy satellites and building blocks

N. D. PADILLA, C. DEL P. LAGOS, S. A. CORA

Río de Janeiro, Brasil

Simposio; XXVII Asamblea General de la IAU; 2009

A semi-analytic model of galaxy formation with and without active galactic nuclei feedback is used tostudy the nature of possible building blocks (BBs) of z=0 galaxies, including those of Milky-Way types. We find that BBs can show an important range of properties arising from environmental variables such as host halo mass, and whether a galaxy is a satellitewithin its host halo; the stellar formation histories are comparatively faster and the chemical enrichment is more efficient in BBs than in surviving satellites, in accordance with recent metallicity measurements for the Milky Way. These results can be used in combination with observational constraintsto continue probing the ability of the cold dark-matter scenario to reproduce the history of galaxy demography in the Universe.