Related papers: Nuclear Star Clusters and Black Holes
There is much debate on how high-mass star formation varies with environment, and whether the sparsest star-forming environments are capable of forming massive stars. To address this issue, we have observed eight apparently isolated OB…
The centre of our Galaxy is one of the most studied and yet enigmatic places in the Universe. At a distance of about 8 kpc from our Sun, the Galactic centre (GC) is the ideal environment to study the extreme processes that take place in the…
We investigate the interaction of a massive globular cluster (GC) with a super massive black hole (SMBH), located at the centre of its host galaxy, by means of direct N-body simulations. The results show that tidal distortions induced by…
LIGO's third observing run (O3) has reported several neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger candidates. From a theoretical point of view, NSBH mergers have received less attention in the community than either binary black holes (BBHs), or…
Direct observational evidence for the creation of nuclear star clusters (NSCs) is needed to support the proposed scenarios for their formation. We analysed the dwarf galaxy UGC 7346, located in the peripheral regions of the Virgo Cluster,…
Star formation plays a central role in the evolution of galaxies and of the Universe as a whole. Studies of star-forming regions in the local universe have shown that star formation typically occurs in a clustered fashion. Building a…
We have identified 26 new globular cluster candidates in the inner 3 kpc of NGC 5128 (Cen A), the nearest known large galaxy being the probable product of a merger. The clusters are selected on the basis of their structural parameters…
Globular clusters which exhibit chemical and dynamical complexity have been suggested to be the stripped nuclei of dwarf galaxies (e.g., M54, $\omega$ Cen). We use $N$-body simulations of nuclear star clusters forming via the mergers of…
NGC 6397 is the second closest globular star cluster to the Sun. Using 5 days of time on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have constructed the deepest ever color-magnitude diagram for this cluster. We see a clear truncation in each of its two…
We explore the properties of dense star clusters that are likely to be the nurseries of stellar black holes pairing in close binaries. We combine a cosmological model of globular cluster formation with analytic prescriptions for the…
Ring-shaped morphologies of nuclear star-forming regions within the central 40-200 pc of disk galaxies have been barely resolved so far in three composite Sy2 nuclei, the Sy2 Circinus galaxy and in three non-AGN galaxies. Such morphologies…
A direct detection of black hole formation in neutron star mergers would provide invaluable information about matter in neutron star cores and finite temperature effects on the nuclear equation of state. We study black hole formation in…
Ultraviolet, optical and near infrared images of the nearby (D ~ 5.5 Mpc) SBm galaxy NGC 1311, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope, reveal a small population of 13 candidate star clusters. We identify candidate star clusters based on a…
We have obtained HST_NICMOS images for 72 nearby spiral galaxy bulges in the H-band. These data show that galaxies with regular bulges have steeper nuclear cusps than galaxies with irregular bulges. We also show that galaxies with regular…
We present results of a set of $N$-body simulations to model the future evolution of the 11 young massive clusters hosted in the central region of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10, which contains at its center a massive black hole…
The full stellar population of NGC 6334, one of the most spectacular regions of massive star formation in the nearby Galaxy, have not been well-sampled in past studies. We analyze here a mosaic of two Chandra X-ray Observatory images of the…
Establishing or ruling out, either through solid mass measurements or upper limits, the presence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at the centers of star clusters would profoundly impact our understanding of problems ranging from the…
We investigate the formation of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) through hierarchical mergers of stellar origin black holes (BHs), as well as BH mergers formed dynamically in nuclear star clusters. Using a semi-analytical approach…
Abridged: Four new nuclear star cluster masses, M_nc, plus seven upper limits, are provided for galaxies with previously determined black hole masses, M_bh. Together with a sample of 64 galaxies with direct M_bh measurements, 13 of which…
We investigate a model in which galactic nuclei form via the coalescence of pre-existing stellar systems containing supermassive black holes. Merger simulations are carried out using N-body algorithms that can follow the formation and decay…