Related papers: Key questions about Galactic Center dynamics
The disks of galaxies are primarily stellar systems, and fundamentally dynamical entities. Thus, to fully understand galactic disks, we must study their stellar kinematics as well as their morphologies. Observational techniques have now…
The Galactic Center hosts a rotating disk of young stars between 0.05 and 0.5 pc of Sgr A*. The ``S-stars'' at a distance $<0.04$ pc, however, are on eccentric orbits with nearly isotropically distributed inclinations. The dynamical origin…
We present results of N-body simulations aimed at understanding the dynamics of young stars near the Galactic center. Specifically, we model the inspiral of a cluster core containing an intermediate mass black hole and $N \sim 50$ cluster…
Galactic globular clusters, which are ancient building blocks of our Galaxy, represent a very interesting family of stellar systems in which some fundamental dynamical processes have taken place on time scales shorter than the age of the…
After a recall of fundamental concepts used in galactic dynamics, we review observational facts as well as results of orbit theory and numerical simulations which suggest long-term evolution of galaxies. Dynamical interactions between…
This paper investigates the origin and orbital evolution of S stars in the Galactic center using models of binary disruption and relaxation processes. We focus on explaining the recently discovered ``zone of avoidance'' in S-star orbital…
The Galactic centre - as the closest galactic nucleus - holds both intrinsic interest and possibly represents a useful analogue to star-burst nuclei which we can observe with orders of magnitude finer detail than these external systems. The…
The coherent torques between stars on orbits near massive black holes (MBHs) lead to resonant angular momentum relaxation. Due to the fact that orbits are Keplerian to good approximation, the torques efficiently change the magnitude of the…
Recent observations have found a 1700 km/s star [S5-HVS1] that was ejected from the Galactic Center approximately five million years ago. This star was likely produced by tidal disruption of a binary. In particular, the Galactic Center…
We investigate the role of massive perturbers, such as giant molecular clouds or stellar clusters, in supplying low-angular momentum stars that pass very close to the central massive black hole (MBH) or fall into it. We show that massive pe…
Recent observations of the Galactic center in high-energy gamma-rays (above 0.1TeV) have opened up new ways to study this region, from understanding the emission source of these high-energy photons to constraining the environment in which…
The Galactic center is a hotbed of star formation activity, containing the most massive star formation site and three of the most massive young star clusters in the Galaxy. Given such a rich environment, it contains more stars with initial…
In this review, I discuss just three aspects of the stability and evolution of galactic discs. (1) I first review our understanding of the bar instability and how it can be controlled. Disc galaxies in which the orbital speed does not…
A great deal of study has been carried out over the last twenty years on the origin of the magnetic activity in the Galactic center. One of the most popular hypotheses assumes milli-Gauss magnetic field with poloidal geometry, pervading the…
Supermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies dominate the gravitational potential of their surrounding stellar clusters. In these dense environments, stars follow nearly Keplerian orbits, which get slowly distorted as a result of the…
Observations of the Galactic Centre show evidence of one or two disc-like structures of very young stars orbiting the central super-massive black hole within a distance of a few 0.1 pc. A number of analyses have been carried out to…
A summary of the current knowledge on hypervelocity stars (HVSs). HVSs are fascinating because their properties are linked to Sgr A* and the stellar environment of the Galactic Center. Observing the distribution of HVSs can address: 1) the…
Galactic disk formation requires knowledge about the initial conditions under which disk galaxies form, the boundary conditions that affect their secular evolution and the micro-physical processes that drive the multi-phase interstellar…
We present the hierarchical structure of the gas and its rapid evolution in the central region of a simulation of the entire Milky Way, run at subparsec resolution. We emphasize the coupling between the kpc-scale dynamics, the molecular…
The nuclear star cluster surrounding the massive black hole at the Galactic Centre consists of young and old stars, with most of the stellar mass in an extended, cuspy distribution of old stars. The compact cluster of young stars was…