The stellar cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole
Astrophysics of Galaxies
2017-02-02 v1
Abstract
The existence of stellar cusps in dense clusters around massive black holes is a fundamental, decades-old prediction of theoretical stellar dynamics. Yet, observational evidence has been difficult to obtain. With a new, improved analysis of high-angular resolution images of the central parsecs of the Galactic Center, we are finally able to provide the first solid evidence for the existence of a stellar cusp around the Milky Way's massive black hole. The existence of stellar cusps has a significant impact on predicted event rates of phenomena like tidal disruptions of stars and extreme mass ratio inspirals.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1702.00219,
title = {The stellar cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole},
author = {R. Schödel and P. Amaro-Seoane and E. Gallego-Cano},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.00219},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
Article for the Proceedings of the 11th International LISA Symposium. To be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series