English

Self-consistent Solutions of Evolving Nuclear Star Clusters with Two-Dimensional Monte-Carlo Dynamical Simulations

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-05-06 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We recently developed a Monte-Carlo method (GNC) that can simulate the dynamical evolution of a nuclear stellar cluster (NSC) with a massive black hole (MBH), where the two-body relaxations can be solved by the Fokker-Planck equations in energy and angular momentum space. Here we make a major update of GNC~ by integrating stellar potential and adiabatic invariant theory, so that we can study the self-consistent dynamics of NSCs with increasing mass of the MBH. We perform tests of the self-adaptation of cluster density due to MBH mass growth and Plummer core collapse, both finding consistent results with previous studies, the latter having a core collapse time of 17trh\sim 17t_{\rm rh} by GNC, where trht_{\rm rh} is the time of half-mass relaxation. We use GNC~ to study the cosmological evolution of the properties of NSC and the mass of MBH assuming that the mass growth of the MBH is due to loss-cone accretion of stars (e.g., tidal disruption of stars) and stellar black holes, and compare the simulation results with the observations of NSCs in Milky-Way or near-by galaxies. Such scenario is possible to produce MBHs with mass 105107M10^5\sim 10^7\,M_\odot for NSCs with stellar mass of 106109M10^6\sim 10^9\,M_\odot. In Milky-Way's NSC, to grow MBH up to 4×106M4\times 10^6\,M_\odot, its size needs to be 1.7\sim 1.7 times more compact in early universe than the current value. MBHs with current masses >6×107M>6\times 10^{7}\,M_\odot seem difficult to explain by loss-cone accretion alone, and thus may require other additional accretion channels, such as gas accretion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.05016,
  title  = {Self-consistent Solutions of Evolving Nuclear Star Clusters with Two-Dimensional Monte-Carlo Dynamical Simulations},
  author = {Fupeng Zhang and Pau Amaro Seoane},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.05016},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

27 pages, 11 figures, ApJ, 2025, 980, 210, typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:00:49.771Z