Related papers: Black Holes and Nuclear Dynamics
We explore here an scenario for massive black hole formation driven by stellar collisions in galactic nuclei, proposing a new formation regime of global instability in nuclear stellar clusters triggered by runaway stellar collisions. Using…
Almost every galaxy in the local Universe is observed to have a massive black hole in the centre. The properties of these black holes are observed to tightly correlate with those of their host galaxy which has been interpreted as…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth plausibly occurs via runaway astrophysical black hole mergers in nuclear star clusters that form intermediate mass black hole seeds at high redshifts. Such a model yields an order-of-magnitude higher…
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…
As self-gravitating systems, dense star clusters exhibit a natural diffusion of energy from their innermost to outermost regions, which leads to a slow and steady contraction of the core until it ultimately collapses under gravity. However,…
Violent activity in the nuclei of galaxies has long been considered a curiosity in its own right; manifestations of this phenomenon include distant quasars in the early Universe and comparatively nearby Seyfert galaxies, both thought to be…
We compute rates of tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, using downwardly-revised black hole masses from the M-sigma relation. In galaxies with steep nuclear density profiles, which dominate the overall…
This is a pedagogical review of recent results on the interactions of central massive black holes with stars very near them, focused on the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Table of contents: [1] Introduction [2] Stellar dynamics…
A review of recent theoretical work on the interactions of supermassive single and binary black holes with their nuclear environments, highlighting ways in which the observed structure of nuclei can be used to constrain the formation…
We present the results of realistic N-body modelling of massive star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds, aimed at investigating a dynamical origin for the radius-age trend observed in these systems. We find that stellar-mass black holes,…
In this lecture we investigate the formation and evolution of black holes in star clusters. The star clusters under consideration are generally rich, containing more than 10^4 stars, and with a density exceeding 10^4 stars/pc^3. Among these…
Over the last decade, HST imaging studies have revealed that the centers of most galaxies are occupied by compact, barely resolved sources. Based on their structural properties, position in the fundamental plane, and spectra, these sources…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
Super-massive black holes, with masses larger than a million times that of the Sun, appear to inhabit the centers of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically-motivated theories of galaxy formation need feedback from these super-massive black…
The distribution of black hole masses in galaxies is constrained by photometric and kinematic studies of individual galaxies, and by the properties of the quasar population. I review our understanding of these topics, present new results of…
We classify orbits of stars that are bound to central black holes in galactic nuclei. The stars move under the combined gravitational influences of the black hole and the central star cluster. Within the sphere of influence of the black…
We use controlled N-body simulations to study the collisional exchange of energy between stars and dark matter in ultra-faint galaxies. We find that dynamical friction between stars and subsolar-mass dark matter particles results in the…
Nuclear Star Clusters are observed at the center of many galaxies. In particular in the center of the Milky Way the Nuclear Star Cluster coexists with a cen- tral supermassive black hole. The origin of these clusters is still unknown; a…
This article gives a brief overview of the direct and indirect evidence in support of the standard paradigm that active galactic nuclei are powered by supermassive black holes.
Globular cluster systems evolve, in galaxies, due to internal and external dynamics and tidal phenomena. One of the causes of evolution, dynamical friction, is responsible for the orbital decay of massive clusters into the innermost…