Related papers: Mapping the Galactic centre's dark cluster via Res…
The centers of galaxies host a supermassive black hole surrounded by a dense stellar cluster. The cluster is expected to develop mass segregation, in which gravitational scatterings among the stars cause heavier objects to sink closer to…
In the past three decades, many stars orbiting about the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the Galactic Centre (Sgr A*) were identified. Their orbital nature can give stringent constraints for the mass of the SMBH. In particular, the star…
Observations of the spatial distribution and kinematics of young stars in the Galactic centre can be interpreted as showing that the stars occupy one, or possibly two, discs of radii ~0.05-0.5 pc. The most prominent (`clockwise') disc…
If the stellar population of the bulge contains black holes formed in the final core collapse of ordinary stars with M \ga 30 M_{\odot}, then about 25,000 stellar mass black holes should have migrated by dynamical friction into the central…
Models of superdense star clusters at the center of galaxies are investigated to see whether such objects can be stable and long-lived based on evaporation and collision time-scales and stability criteria. We find that physically reasonable…
Over a two year period (1995-1997), we have conducted a diffraction-limited imaging study at 2.2 microns of the inner 6"x6" of the Galaxy's central stellar cluster using the Keck 10-m telescope. The K band images obtained reveal a large…
We consider the possibility that an infalling bulge core or stellar cluster could form an eccentric disk, following tidal disruption by a massive black hole in the center of a galaxy. As a function of central black hole mass, we constrain…
It has been recently shown (Munyaneza, Tsiklauri and Viollier 1998) that the analysis of the orbits of the fast moving stars close to Sgr A$^{*}$ (Eckart and Genzel 1997) provides a valuable tool to probe the gravitational potential near…
The Galactic Center is the closest galactic nucleus that can be studied with unprecedented angular resolution and sensitivity. We summarize recent basic observational results on Sagittarius A* and the conditions for star formation in the…
We review the physical processes that occur at the center of the Galaxy and that are related to the supermassive black hole Sgr A* residing there. The discovery of high-velocity S0 stars orbiting Sgr A* for the first time allowed measuring…
If supermassive black holes in centres of galaxies form by merging of black-hole remnants of massive Population III stars, then there should be a few black holes of mass one or two orders of magnitude smaller than that of the central ones,…
Galactic nuclei, the densest stellar environments in the Universe, exhibit a complex geometrical structure. The stars orbiting the central supermassive black hole follow a mass segregated distribution both in the radial distance from the…
The centers of most galaxies contain massive black holes surrounded by dense star clusters. The structure of these clusters determines the rate and properties of observable transient events, such as flares from tidally disrupted stars and…
Knowledge of the structure of galaxy clusters is essential for an understanding of large scale structure in the universe, and may provide important clues to the nature of dark matter. Moreover, the shape of the dark matter distribution in…
A dark star cluster (DSC) is a system in which the cluster potential is dominated by stellar remnants, such as black holes and neutron stars having larger masses than the long-lived low-mass stars. Due to mass segregation, these remnants…
Recent observations and stellar dynamics simulations suggest that thousand solar mass black holes can form in compact massive young star clusters. Any such clusters in the bulge of their host galaxy will spiral to the center within a few…
The inspiral of a turbulent molecular cloud in the Galactic Centre may result in the formation of a small, dense and moderately eccentric gas disc around the supermassive black hole (SMBH). Such a disc is unstable to fragmentation and may…
Evolution of self-gravitating rotating dense stellar systems (e.g. globular clusters, galactic nuclei) with embedded black holes is investigated. The interaction between the black hole and stellar component in differential rotating…
A supermassive black hole has been found at the centre of nearly every galaxy observed with sufficient sensitivity. The masses of these black holes are observed to increase with either the total mass or the mean (random) velocity of the…
The Galactic Center hosts the densest known stellar environment in the Milky Way, dominated by the massive black hole Sgr A* and the surrounding nuclear star cluster. Theory predicts that this region should also contain a large population…