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On the origin of young stars at the Galactic center

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

Ann-Marie Madigan ,
Oliver Pfuhl ,
Yuri Levin ,
Stefan Gillessen ,
Reinhard Genzel  and
Hagai B. Perets
Ann-Marie Madigan
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department and Theoretical Astrophysics Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow; email: [email protected] Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P. O. Box 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
Oliver Pfuhl
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, 85748 Garching, Germany
Yuri Levin
Affiliation:
Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P. O. Box 9513, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands School of Physics, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia
Stefan Gillessen
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, 85748 Garching, Germany
Reinhard Genzel
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, 85748 Garching, Germany Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Hagai B. Perets
Affiliation:
Physics Department, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel32000
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Abstract

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The center of our Galaxy is home to a massive black hole, Sgr A*, and a nuclear star cluster containing stellar populations of various ages. While the late type stars may be too old to have retained memory of their initial orbital configuration, and hence formation mechanism, the kinematics of the early type stars should reflect their original distribution. In this contribution we present a new statistic which uses directly-observable kinematic stellar data to infer orbital parameters for stellar populations, and is capable of distinguishing between different origin scenarios. We use it on a population of B-stars in the Galactic center that extends out to large radii (∼0.5 pc) from the massive black hole. We find that the high K-magnitude population (≲15 M⊙) form an eccentric distribution, suggestive of a Hills binary-disruption origin.

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 9 , Symposium S303: The Galactic Center: Feeding and Feedback in a Normal Galactic Nucleus , October 2013 , pp. 238 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2014 

References

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