What do RR Lyrae tell us about the formation of the Milky Way and M31 haloes?

Abstract

RR Lyrae variables are old (>10 Gyr) stars and, as such, they are useful probes of the earliest events of star formation in galaxies (Bernard et al. 2008, Martínez-Vázquez et al. 2016) as well as of the galaxy assembly process predicted by ΛCDM simulations of structure formation. In fact, the nature of the building-blocks of galaxies such as the Milky Way, and in particular, those of their stellar haloes, has been a matter of a substantial debate (Venn et al. 2004). Unlike other stellar tracers, RR Lyrae offer a snapshot of the stellar content present at the epoch when most of the merging action is predicted to have taken place, and thus they are ideal witnesses of this process.