Related papers: Dynamical Models of the Galactic Center
We present an analysis of the central cusp slopes and core parameters of early-type galaxies using a large database of surface brightness profiles obtained from Hubble Space Telescope observations. We examine the relation between the…
Our current understanding of the stellar initial mass function and massive star evolution suggests that young globular clusters may have formed hundreds to thousands of stellar-mass black holes, the remnants of stars with initial masses…
During the last $\sim$ 30 Myr the nuclear stellar disk in the Galactic center has been the most prolific star forming region of the Milky Way when averaged by volume. Remarkably, the combined mass of the only three clusters present today in…
We present a population analysis of the nuclear stellar cluster of the Milky Way based on adaptive optics narrow band spectral energy distributions. We find strong evidence for the lack of a stellar cusp and a similarity of the late type…
Quasars are associated with and powered by the accretion of material onto massive black holes; the detection of highly luminous quasars with redshifts greater than z = 6 suggests that black holes of up to ten billion solar masses already…
We use the semi-analytic model developed by Henriques et al. (2015) to explore the origin of star formation history diversity for galaxies that lie at the centre of their dark matter haloes and have present-day stellar masses in the range…
The Milky Way galaxy is observed to have multiple components with distinct properties, such as the bulge, disk, and halo. Unraveling the assembly history of these populations provides a powerful test to the theory of galaxy formation and…
The Galactic Center is an excellent laboratory for studying phenomena and physical processes that may be occurring in many other galactic nuclei. The Center of our Milky Way is by far the closest galactic nucleus, and observations with…
We present a new analytical solution to the steady-state distribution of stars close to a central supermassive black hole of mass $M_{\bullet}$ in the center of a galaxy. Assuming a continuous mass function of the form $dN/dm \propto…
We investigate the diversity of dark matter (DM) density profiles in a large sample of late-type galaxies from the SPARC database, with the goal of testing whether a cusp-to-core transition occurs across galaxy mass scales. We perform…
The environment within the inner few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way, known as the "Central Molecular Zone" (CMZ), harbours densities and pressures orders of magnitude higher than the Galactic Disc; akin to that at the peak of cosmic star…
Recent studies of nearby globular clusters have discovered excess dark mass in their cores, apparently in an extended distribution, and simulations indicate that this mass is composed mostly of white dwarfs (respectively stellar-mass black…
At the cosmological stage of radiation dominance, dark matter density spikes should form around primordial black holes. In the case when dark matter particles are able to annihilate, the density in the central regions of the spikes…
The evolution of the Milky Way disk, which contains most of the stars in the Galaxy, is affected by several phenomena. For example, the bar and the spiral arms of the Milky Way induce radial migration of stars and can trap or scatter stars…
We study the age and metallicity distribution function (MDF) of metal-poor stars in the Milky Way halo as a function of galactocentric radius by combining N-body simulations and semi-analytical methods. We find that the oldest stars…
The Galactic bulge, that is the prominent out-of-plane over-density present in the inner few kiloparsecs of the Galaxy, is a complex structure, as the morphology, kinematics, chemistry and ages of its stars indicate. To understand the…
The analysis of the distribution of stars in open clusters may yield important information on the star formation process and early dynamical evolution of stellar clusters. Here we address this issue by systematically characterizing the…
In this paper we report results of collisional N-body simulations of the dynamical evolution of equal-mass star clusters containing a massive central black hole. Each cluster is composed of between 5,000 to 180,000 stars together with a…
Nuclear stellar cluster (NSCs) are known to exist around massive black holes (MBHs) in galactic nuclei. They are thought to have formed through in-situ star formation following gas inflow to the nucleus of the galaxy and/or through the…
I discuss four key questions about Galactic Center dynamics, their implications for understanding both the environment of the Galactic MBH and galactic nuclei in general, and the progress made in addressing them. The questions are (1) Is…