Related papers: Black Holes and Galaxy Dynamics
Significant historic cosmic evolution for the formation rate of stellar black holes is inferred from current theoretical models of the evolution of massive stars, the multiple observations of compact stellar remnants in the near and distant…
A significant fraction of nearby galaxies show evidence of weak nuclear activity unrelated to normal stellar processes. Recent high-resolution, multiwavelength observations indicate that the bulk of this activity derives from black hole…
The masses of supermassive black holes (SBHs) show correlations with bulge properties in disk and elliptical galaxies. We study the formation of galactic structure within flat-core triaxial haloes and show that these correlations can be…
We discuss the properties of orbits within the influence sphere of a supermassive black hole (BH), in the case that the surrounding star cluster is nonaxisymmetric. There are four major orbit families; one of these, the pyramid orbits, have…
In classical loss cone theory, stars are supplied to a central black hole via gravitational scattering onto low angular momentum orbits. Higher feeding rates are possible if the gravitational potential near the black hole is…
Galactic nuclei host central massive objects either in the form of supermassive black holes or nuclear stellar clusters. Recent investigations have shown that both components co-exist in at least a few galaxies. In this paper we explore the…
We investigate the timescales for stochasticity and chaotic mixing in a family of triaxial potentials that mimic the distribution of light in elliptical galaxies. Some of the models include central point masses designed to represent nuclear…
Galaxies with stellar bulges are generically observed to host supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The hierarchical merging of galaxies should therefore lead to the formation of SMBH binaries. Merging of old massive galaxies with little gas…
Massive black holes (MBHs) with a mass below ~ 1e7 Msun are likely to reside at the centre of dense stellar nuclei shaped by 2-body relaxation, close interactions with the MBH and direct collisions. In this contribution, we stress the role…
Supermassive black holes have been discovered at the centers of galaxies, and also in globular clusters. The data shows correlations between the black hole mass and the elliptical galaxy mass or globular cluster mass. It is shown that this…
Supermassive black holes can capture or disrupt stars that come sufficiently close. This article reviews the dynamical processes by which stars or stellar remnants are placed onto loss-cone orbits and the implications for feeding rates. The…
A significant fraction of local galaxies show evidence of nuclear activity. I argue that the bulk of this activity, while energetically not remarkable, derives from accretion onto a central massive black hole. The statistics of nearby…
Supermassive stars, with masses greater than a million solar masses, are possible progenitors of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei. Because of their short nuclear burning timescales, such objects can be formed only when matter is…
We show that the ABC scenario we proposed for the co-evolution of spheroids and QSOs predicts accretion rates and masses of supermassive black holes in sub-mm galaxies in keeping with recent X-ray determinations. These masses are well below…
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…
Dynamical friction due to field stars and tidal disruption caused by a central nucleus are crucial in determining the evolution of the globular cluster system in an elliptical galaxy. In this paper I examine the possibility that some of…
The motion of a black hole about the centre of gravity of its host galaxy induces a strong response from the surrounding stellar population. We treat the case of a harmonic potential analytically and show that half of the stars on circular…
We study the kinematics of gaseous disks in triaxial dark matter halos using the closed-loop orbit solutions in non-axisymmetric potentials. The orbits are in general non-circular and, for given triaxiality, their ellipticity depends on the…
The tight relationship between the masses of black holes and galaxy spheroids in nearby galaxies implies a causal connection between the growth of these two components. Optically luminous quasars host the most prodigious accreting 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…