Tracing the anemic stellar halo of M 101

¹ Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: hanlbomi@gmail.com
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Louisville, 102 Natural Science Building, Louisville, KY 40292, USA
³ Instituto de Investigación Multidisciplinar en Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad de La Serena, Raúl Bitrán 1305, La Serena, Chile
⁴ Departamento de Física y Astronomía, Universidad de La Serena, Av. Juan Cisternas 1200 Norte, La Serena, Chile
⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 311 West Hall, 1085 South University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107, USA
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Box 870324, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0324, USA

Received: 25 October 2019
Accepted: 18 January 2020

Abstract

Models of galaxy formation in a cosmological context predict that massive disk galaxies should have structured extended stellar halos. Recent studies in integrated light, however, report that a few galaxies, including the nearby disk galaxy M 101, have no measurable stellar halos to the detection limit. We aim to quantify the stellar content and structure of M 101’s outskirts by resolving its stars. We present the photometry of its stars based on deep F606W and F814W images taken with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as part of the GHOSTS survey. The HST fields are placed along the east and west sides of M 101 out to galactocentric distance (R) of ∼70 kpc. The constructed color-magnitude diagrams of stars reach down to two magnitudes below the tip of the red giant branch. We derived radial number density profiles of the bright red giant branch (RGB) stars. The mean color of the RGB stars at R ∼ 40−60 kpc is similar to those of metal-poor globular clusters in the Milky Way. We also derived radial surface brightness profiles using the public image data provided by the Dragonfly team. Both the radial number density and surface brightness profiles were converted to radial mass density profiles and combined. We find that the mass density profiles show a weak upturn at the very outer region, where surface brightness is as faint as μ_g ≈ 33 mag arcsec⁻². An exponential disk + power-law halo model on the mass density profiles finds the total stellar halo mass of M_halo = 8.2_−2.2^+3.5 × 10⁷ M_⊙. The total stellar halo mass does not exceed M_halo = 3.2 × 10⁸ M_⊙ when strongly truncated disk models are considered. In combining the halo mass with the total stellar mass of M 101, we obtain the stellar halo mass fraction of M_halo/M_gal = 0.20_−0.08^+0.10% with an upper limit of 0.78%. We compare the halo properties of M 101 with those of six GHOSTS survey galaxies as well as the Milky Way and M 31 and find that M 101 has an anemic stellar halo similar to the Milky Way.