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Dynamical Friciton near the Galactic Center
Author(s) -
Kim Sungsoo S.,
Figer Donald F.,
Morris Mark
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.200385105
Subject(s) - physics , galactic center , parsec , astrophysics , star cluster , stars , cluster (spacecraft) , dynamical friction , tidal force , astronomy , mass segregation , star formation , galactic tide , galaxy , galactic halo , computer science , halo , programming language
Numerical simulations of the dynamical friction suffered by a star cluster near the Galactic center have been performed with a parallelized tree code. Gerhard (2001) has suggested that dynamical friction, which causes a cluster to lose orbital energy and spiral in towards the galactic center, may explain the presence of a cluster of very young stars in the central parsec, where star formation might be prohibitively difficult owing to strong tidal forces. The clusters modeled in our simulations have an initial total mass of 10 5 –10 6 M ⊙ and initial galactocentric radii of 2.5–30 pc. We have identified a few simulations in which dynamical friction indeed brings a cluster to the central parsec, although this is only possible if the cluster is either very massive (∼ 10 6 M ⊙ ), or is formed near the central parsec (≲5 pc). In both cases, the cluster should have an initially very dense core (>10 6 M ⊙ pc −3 ). The initial segregation of massive stars into the cluster core can help achieve the requisite density, and can help account for the observed distribution of He I stars in the central parsec.