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Gas physics and dynamics in the central 50 pc of the Galaxy
Author(s) -
Vollmer B.,
Duschl W. J.,
Zylka R.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
astronomische nachrichten
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.394
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-3994
pISSN - 0004-6337
DOI - 10.1002/asna.200385095
Subject(s) - physics , astrophysics , galaxy , accretion (finance) , accretion disc , gravitation , molecular cloud , astronomy , stars
We present models for the gas physics and dynamics of the inner 50 pc of the Galaxy. In a first step the gas properties of an isolated clumpy circumnuclear disk were analytically investigated. We took the external UV radiation field, the gravitational potential, and the observed gas temperature into account. The model includes a description of the properties of individual gas clumps on small scales, and a treatment of the circumnuclear disk as a quasi‐continuous accretion disk on large scales. In a second step the dynamics of an isolated circumnuclear disk were investigated with the help of a collisional N‐body code. The environment of the disk is taken into account in a third step, where we calculated a pro‐ and a retrograde encounter of an infalling gas cloud with a pre‐existing circumnuclear disk. In order to constrain the dynamical model, we used the NIR absorption of the giant molecular clouds located within the inner 50 pc of the Galaxy to reconstruct their line‐of‐sight distribution.