The Origin of IRS 16: Dynamically Driven In‐Spiral of a Dense Star Cluster to the Galactic Center?

We use direct N-body simulations to study the inspiral and internal evolutionof dense star clusters near the Galactic center. These clusters sink toward thecenter due to dynamical friction with the stellar background, and may go intocore collapse before being disrupted by the Galactic tidal field. If a clusterreaches core collapse before disruption, its dense core, which has become richin massive stars, survives to reach close to the Galactic center. When iteventually dissolves, the cluster deposits a disproportionate number of massivestars in the innermost parsec of the Galactic nucleus. Comparing the spatialdistribution and kinematics of the massive stars with observations of IRS 16, agroup of young He I stars near the Galactic center, we argue that thisassociation may have formed in this way.Comment: 15 pages, Accepted for publiction in Ap