Related papers: Steeper stellar cusps in galactic centers from bin…
Making use of a new N-body model to describe the evolution of a moderate-size globular cluster we investigate the characteristics of the population of black holes within such a cluster. This model reaches core-collapse and achieves a peak…
The globular clusters that we observe in galaxies may be only a fraction of the initial population. Among the evolutionary influences on the population is the destruction of globular clusters by tidal forces as the cluster moves through the…
A method is developed to evaluate the magnifications of the images of galaxies with lensing potentials stratified on similar concentric ellipses. A simple contour integral is provided which enables the sums of the magnifications of even…
We present preliminary results of the application of a new sophisticated code which allows high precision integration of orbits of stars belonging to a dense stellar system moving in the vicinity of a massive black hole. This mimics the…
There is significant observational evidence that a large fraction of galactic centers, including those in the Milky Way and M31, host a supermassive black hole (SMBH) embedded in a triaxial nuclear star cluster. In this work, we study the…
Within the central parsec of the Galaxy, several tens of young stars orbiting a central supermassive black hole are observed. A subset of these stars forms a coherently rotating disc. Other observations reveal a massive molecular torus…
The history of star formation in the strong gravitational potential of the Galactic center has been of much interest, recently. We propose that the sub-parsec-scale disk of massive stars orbiting the massive black hole at the Galactic…
We propose that the cloud moving on a highly eccentric orbit near the central black hole in our Galaxy, reported by Gillessen et al., is formed by a photoevaporation wind originating in a disk around a star that is tidally perturbed and…
Over the past two decades observations have revealed that the vertical density distribution of stars in galaxies near the mid-plane is substantially steeper than the sech^2 function that is expected from an isothermal approximation.…
In binary black-hole mergers from isolated binary-star evolution, both black holes are from progenitor stars that have lost their hydrogen-rich envelopes by binary mass transfer. Envelope stripping is known to affect the pre-supernova core…
The surface brightness profiles of early-type galaxies have central cusps. Two characteristic profile types are observed with HST: `core' profiles have a break at a resolved radius and logarithmic cusp slope gamma < 0.3 inside that radius;…
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…
Disks of low-mass bodies scattered by giant planets to large semi-major axis and constant periapsis orbits are vulnerable to a buckling instability. This instability exponentially grows orbital inclinations, raises periapsis distances, and…
We investigate the dynamical interaction of a central star cluster surrounding a super-massive black hole and a central accretion disk. The dissipative force acting on stars in the disk leads to an enhanced mass flow towards the…
The Galactic Center has been under intense scrutiny in the recent years thanks to the unprecedented missions aiming at measuring the gas and star dynamics near the supermassive black hole (SMBH) and at finding gravitational wave (GW)…
Giant elliptical galaxies, believed to be built from the merger of lesser galaxies, are known to house a massive black hole at their center rather than a compact star cluster. If low- and intermediate-mass galaxies do indeed partake in the…
Globular Clusters (GCs) are known to host distinct stellar populations, characterized by different chemical compositions. Despite extensive research, the origin of these populations remains elusive. According to many formation scenarios,…
We present, for the first time, a clear $N$-body realization of the {\it strong mass segregation} solution for the stellar distribution around a massive black hole. We compare our $N$-body results with those obtained by solving the…
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…
Close encounters between neutron stars and main-sequence stars occur in globular clusters and may lead to various outcomes. Here we study encounters resulting in tidal disruption of the star. Using $N$-body models, we predict the typical…