Related papers: The Dense Stellar Systems Around Galactic Massive …
In large spheroidal stellar systems, such as elliptical galaxies, one invariably finds a 10^6-10^9 M_Sun supermassive black hole at their centre. In contrast, within dwarf elliptical galaxies one predominantly observes a 10^5-10^7 M_Sun…
We develop a simple physical model to describe the dynamics of a massive point-like object, such as a black hole, near the center of a dense stellar system. It is shown that the total force on this body can be separated into two independent…
Most stars form in compact, dense embedded clusters with memberships ranging from a dozen stars to many millions of stars. Embedded clusters containing more than a few hundred stars also contain O stars that disrupt the nebula abruptly.…
The formation of massive stars in close binary systems is complicated due to their high radiation pressure, the crowded environment and the expected minimum separation for fragmentation being many times greater than the orbital separation.…
Motivated by recent observations that suggest a low density of old stars around the Milky Way supermassive black hole, models for the nuclear star cluster are considered that have not yet reached a steady state under the influence of…
The study of how stars distribute themselves around a massive black hole (MBH) in the center of a galaxy is an important prerequisite for the understanding of many galactic-center processes. These include the observed overabundance of point…
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…
Black holes formed in dense star clusters, where dynamical interactions are frequent, may have fundamentally different properties than those formed through isolated stellar evolution. Theoretical models for single star evolution predict a…
Among the most explored directions in the study of dense stellar systems is the investigation of the effects of the retention of supernova remnants, especially that of the massive stellar remnant black holes (BHs), in star clusters. By…
The orbital decay and tidal disruption of a star cluster in a galaxy is studied in an analytical manner. Owing to dynamical friction, the star cluster spirals in toward the center of the galaxy. Simultaneously, the galactic tidal field…
Star formation takes place in the dense gas phase, and therefore a simple dense gas and star formation rate relation has been proposed. With the advent of multi-beam receivers, new observations show that the deviation from linear relations…
We present a set of 148 independent $N$-body simulations of globular clusters (GCs) computed using the code $\texttt{CMC}$ ($\texttt{Cluster Monte Carlo}$). At an age of $\sim10-13\,$Gyr, the resulting models cover nearly the full range of…
The universe's biggest galaxies have both vast atmospheres and supermassive central black holes. This article reviews how those two components of a large galaxy couple and regulate the galaxy's star formation rate. Models of interactions…
We review the main physical processes that lead to the formation of stellar binary black holes (BBHs) and to their merger. BBHs can form from the isolated evolution of massive binary stars. The physics of core-collapse supernovae and the…
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…
Globular clusters (GCs), the oldest stellar systems observed in the Milky Way, have for long been considered single stellar populations. As such, they provided an ideal laboratory to understand stellar dynamics and primordial star formation…
In this paper we revisit the "eccentric disc instability", an instability which occurs in coherently eccentric discs of stars orbiting massive black holes (MBHs) embedded in stellar clusters, which results in stars achieving either very…
A luminous X-ray source is associated with a cluster (MGG-11) of young stars \~200pc from the center of the starburst galaxy M82. The properties of the X-ray source are best explained by a black hole with a mass of at least 350Msun, which…
We present a relationship between the black hole mass, stellar mass, and star formation rate of a diverse group of 91 galaxies with dynamically-measured black hole masses. For our sample of galaxies with a variety of morphologies and other…
Supermassive black hole accretion and star formation appear intimately connected. I review the observational and theoretical evidence for this statement. I then discuss how focussed studies of two systems, our Galactic Center and the…