Related papers: Red giant stellar collisions in the Galactic Centr…
Collisions and interactions between gas-rich galaxies are thought to be pivotal stages in their formation and evolution, causing the rapid production of new stars, and possibly serving as a mechanism for fueling supermassive black holes…
Chromospheric model calculations of the Halpha line for selected red giant branch (RGB) and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the globular clusters M13, M15, and M92 are constructed to derive mass loss rates. The model spectra are…
Stellar photometry of nearby irregular galaxies of the Local Group is used to identify and study the young and old stellar populations of these galaxies. An analysis of the spatial distributions of stars of different ages in face-on…
The existence of massive, compact galaxies (Little Red Dots, LRDs) at $z \sim 2$ challenges early structure formation models, suggesting rapid stellar and black hole (BH) assembly. While LRDs are efficient environments for BH growth, many…
It was suggested by several authors that hypothetical primordial black holes (PBHs) may contribute to the dark matter in our Galaxy. There are strong constraints based on the Hawking evaporation that practically exclude PBHs with masses…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
We examine the black hole mass - galaxy bulge relationship in high-redshift QSOs. Black hole masses are derived from the broad emission lines, and the host galaxy stellar velocity dispersion sigma is estimated from the widths of the radio…
We use the clustering of galaxies around distant active-galactic nuclei to derive an estimate of the relationship between galaxy and black hole mass that obtained during the ancient quasar epoch, at redshifts 2 <~ z <~ 3, when giant black…
Approximately two hundred supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been discovered within the first $\sim$Gyr after the Big Bang. One pathway for the formation of SMBHs is through the collapse of supermassive stars (SMSs). A possible obstacle…
Two-body energy exchange between stars orbiting massive black holes (MBHs) leads to the formation of a power-law density distribution n(r)~r^(-a) that diverges towards the MBH. For a single mass population, a=7/4 and the flow of stars is…
The relaxation time at the half-mass radius of Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) is typically within a few Gyr. Hence, the majority of GGCs are expected to be well relaxed systems, given their age is around 12-13 Gyr. So any initial radial…
Massive clusters in our Galaxy are an ideal testbed to investigate the properties and evolution of high mass stars. They provide statistically significant samples of massive stars of uniform ages. To accurately determine the intrinsic…
We use hydrodynamical simulations to study the color transformations induced by star formation and active galactic nuclei (AGN) during major mergers of spiral galaxies. Our modeling accounts for radiative cooling, star formation, and…
V-band luminosity functions have been obtained for the upper main-sequence, sub-giant branch and red giant branch of 18 galactic globular clusters from HST data. A comparison with four sets of theoretical models has been performed. In…
We point out that a high number density of stars in the core of a dense star cluster such as the central stellar cluster at the Galactic center, where many stars possess strong stellar winds, should result in collisions of those winds. The…
It has been argued that a substantial fraction of massive stars may end their lives without an optically bright supernova (SN), but rather collapse to form a black hole. Such an event would not be detected by current SN surveys, which are…
Observations with WFC3/IR on the Hubble Space Telescope and the use of gravitational lensing techniques have facilitated the discovery of galaxies as far back as z ~ 10-12, a truly remarkable achievement. However, this rapid emergence of…
Formation paradigms for massive galaxies have long centered around two antipodal hypotheses -- the monolithic-collapse and the accretion/merger scenarios. Empirical data on the stellar contents of galaxy halos is crucial in order to develop…
The last decade has seen the detection of fast moving stars in the Galactic halo, the so-called hypervelocity stars (HVSs). While the bulk of this population is likely the result of a close encounter between a stellar binary and the…
Shallow cores in bright, massive galaxies are commonly thought to be the result of scouring of stars by mergers of binary supermassive black holes. Past investigations have suggested correlations between the central black hole mass and the…