Related papers: Eccentric Nuclear Disks with Self Gravity: Predict…
We present new dynamical models of weakly self-gravitating, finite dispersion eccentric stellar disks around central black holes for the double nucleus of M31. The disk is fixed in a frame rotating at constant precession speed, and is…
We construct dynamical models of the ``double'' nucleus of M31 in which the nucleus consists of an eccentric disk of stars orbiting a central black hole. The principal approximation in these models is that the disk stars travel in a Kepler…
The nucleus of M31 may be a thick eccentric disk, composed of stars traveling on nearly Keplerian orbits around a black hole or other dark compact object. This hypothesis reproduces most of the features seen in HST photometry of the center…
We present three-dimensional eccentric disc models of the nucleus of M31, modelling the disc as a linear combination of thick rings of massless stars orbiting in the potential of a central black hole. Our models are nonparametric…
The M31 nucleus contains a supermassive black hole embedded in a massive stellar disk of apsidally-aligned eccentric orbits. It has recently been shown that this disk is slowly precessing at a rate consistent with zero. Here we demonstrate…
The nuclear rotation curve of M31, as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope Faint Object Camera Spectrograph, shows a significant disturbance coinciding with the off-center brightness peak, P1. This +/- 60 km/s feature is distinguished by…
The double nucleus geometry of M31 is currently best explained by the eccentric disk hypothesis of Tremaine, but whether the eccentric disk resulted from the tidal disruption of an inbounding star cluster by a nuclear black hole, or by an…
The Andromeda Galaxy hosts an elongated nucleus with (at least) two distinct brightness peaks. The double nucleus can be explained by the projection of a thick, apsidally-aligned eccentric nuclear disk of stars in orbit about the central…
In some galaxies, the stars orbiting the supermassive black hole take the form of an eccentric nuclear disk, in which every star is on a coherent, apsidally-aligned orbit. The most famous example of an eccentric nuclear disk is the double…
The central bulge of M31 is observed to have two distinct brightness peaks with the separation of $\sim$ 2 pc. Tremaine (1995) recently proposed a new idea that the M31's nucleus is actually a single thick eccentric disk surrounding the…
We show that gas disks around the components of an orbiting binary system (so-called minidisks) may be susceptible to a resonant instability which causes the minidisks to become significantly eccentric. Eccentricity is injected by, and also…
The nucleus of our nearest, large galactic neighbor, M31, contains an eccentric nuclear disk--a disk of stars on eccentric, apsidally-aligned orbits around a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Previous studies of eccentric nuclear disks…
Massive eccentric disks (gaseous or particulate) orbiting a dominant central mass appear in many astrophysical systems, including planetary rings, protoplanetary and accretion disks in binaries, and nuclear stellar disks around supermassive…
We present stellar dynamical models of the lopsided, double-peaked nucleus of M31, derived from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry. A Schwarzscild-type method, in conjunction with Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, was employed to…
Accretion disks around stars, or other central massive bodies, can support long-lived, slowly precessing $m=1$ disturbances in which the fluid motion is nearly Keplerian with non-zero eccentricity. We study such `slow modes' in disks that…
We identify a new secular instability of eccentric stellar disks around supermassive black holes. We show that retrograde precession of the stellar orbits, due to the presence of a stellar cusp, induces coherent torques that amplify…
We present a kinematic study of the nuclear stellar disk in M31 at infrared wavelengths using high spatial resolution integral field spectroscopy. The spatial resolution achieved, FWHM = 0."12 (0.45 pc at the distance of M31), has only…
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…
It is strongly believed that Andromeda's double nucleus signals a disk of stars revolving around its central super-massive black hole on eccentric Keplerian orbits with nearly aligned apsides. A self-consistent stellar dynamical origin for…
We consider warped equilibrium configurations for stellar and gaseous disks in the Keplerian force-field of a supermassive black hole, assuming that the self-gravity of the disk provides the only acting torques. Modeling the disk as a…