Radial stability of a family of anisotropic Hernquist models with and without a supermassive black hole

Abstract

We present a method to investigate the radial stability of a spherical anisotropic system that hosts a central supermassive black hole (SBH). Such systems have never been tested before for stability, although high anisotropies have been considered in the dynamical models that were used to estimate the masses of the central putative supermassive black holes. A family of analytical anisotropic spherical Hernquist models with and without a black hole were investigated by means of N-body simulations. A clear trend emerges that the supermassive black hole has a significant effect on the overall stability of the system, i.e. an SBH with a mass of a few percent of the total mass of the galaxy can prevent or reduce the bar instabilities in anisotropic systems. Its mass not only determines the strength of the instability reduction, but also the time in which this occurs. These effects are most significant for models with strong radial anisotropies. Furthermore, our analysis shows that unstable systems with similar SBH but with different anisotropy radii evolve differently: highly radial systems become oblate, while more isotropic models tend to form into prolate structures. In addition to this study, we also present a Monte-Carlo algorithm to generate particles in spherical anisotropic systems.