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Black Holes and Nuclear Dynamics

David Merritt
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Abstract

Supermassive black holes inhabit galactic nuclei, and their presence influences in crucial ways the evolution of the stellar distribution. The low-density cores observed in bright galaxies are probably a result of black hole infall, while steep density cusps like those at the Galactic center are a result of energy exchange between stars moving in the gravitational field of the single black hole. Loss-cone dynamics are substantially more complex in galactic nuclei than in collisionally-relaxed systems like globular clusters due to the wider variety of possible geometries and orbital populations. The rate of star-black hole interactions has begun to be constrained through observations of energetic events associated with stellar tidal disruptions.

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David Merritt. 2006-02-17. Black Holes and Nuclear Dynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0602353

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