Thomas S. Statler
AST Division of Astronomical Sciences
MPS Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences
Start Date:
August 1, 2008
Expires:
July 31, 2010 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:
$101250
Investigator(s):
David Merritt merritt@astro.rit.edu (Principal Investigator)
Simon Portegies_Zwart (Co-Principal Investigator) Tal Alexander (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:
Rochester Institute of Tech
1 LOMB MEMORIAL DR
ROCHESTER, NY 14623 585/475-7525
NSF Program(s):
EXTRAGALACTIC ASTRON & COSMOLO
Field Application(s):
Program Reference Code(s):
OTHR, 1206, 0000
Program Element Code(s):
1217
ABSTRACT
Dr. Merritt and his collaborators will use the special-purpose hardware GRAPE to run direct N-body simulations with roughly a million particles, to study the motion of stars and of less massive black holes in a cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole, a few million times as massive as the Sun. This will be the first set of simulations that can represent each star near the Galactic center by a single particle. The simulations will use a new regularization scheme to follow stars that make close approaches to each other or to the black hole; this is adapted to handle extreme mass ratios between the approaching particles, and includes some relativistic effects. The code will be used to investigate how an intermediate-mass black hole of about 10,000 times the Sun's mass would affect the orbits of nuclear stars, and the build-up of the central supermassive black hole, as it spiraled inwards. The simulations will be used to test models for the origin and dynamical evolution of the observed stellar disks on scales below a parsec. Finally, the team will model relaxation of the stellar orbits in the vicinity of the central black hole, which controls how fast stars are nudged onto orbits from which the black hole will swallow them.
The work will be carried out with international collaborators in Europe and Israel, as well as colleagues and students at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The 'GRAPE group' of undergraduates and master's students from computer science and other disciplines will work on the visualization software. Dr Merritt will also work with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf on the RIT campus to attract deaf students into the GRAPE group.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
Antonini, F.; Capuzzo-Dolcetta, R.; Merritt, D.. "An instability in triaxial stellar systems Authors: ," Astronomische Nachrichten, v.329, 2008, p. 900.
Berentzen, Ingo; Preto, Miguel; Berczik, Peter; Merritt, David; Spurzem, Rainer. " Binary Black Hole Merger in Galactic Nuclei: Post-Newtonian Simulations," The Astrophysical Journal, v.695, 2009, p. 455.
Gualandris, A.; Harfst, S.; Merritt, D.; Mikkola, S.. "Evolution of stellar orbits in the Galactic centre," Astronomische Nachrichten, v.329, 2008, p. 1008.
Gualandris, A; Merritt, D. "Ejection of supermassive black holes from galaxy cores," ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, v.678, 2008, p. 780-797.
Harfst, S.; Gualandris, A.; Merritt, D.; Mikkola, S.. "Orbits of stars in the central parsec," Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana, v.79, 2008, p. 1109.
Harfst, S.; Gualandris, A.; Merritt, D.; Mikkola, S.. "A hybrid N-body code incorporating algorithmic regularization and post-Newtonian forces," Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, v.389, 2008, p. 2.
Komossa, S.; Merritt, David. " Gravitational Wave Recoil Oscillations of Black Holes: Implications for Unified Models of Active Galactic Nuclei," The Astrophysical Journal, v.689, 2008, p. L89.
Komossa, S; Merritt, D. "Tidal disruption flares from recoiling supermassive black holes," ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, v.683, 2008, p. L21-L24.
Merritt, David. "Evolution of Nuclear Star Clusters," The Astrophysical Journal, v.694, 2009, p. 959.
Merritt, David; Gualandris, Alessia; Mikkola, Seppo. "Explaining the Orbits of the Galactic Center S-Stars," The Astrophysical Journal, v.693, 2009, p. L35.
Miguel Preto, Ingo Berentzen, Peter Berczik, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem. "Merger of Massive Black Holes using N-Body Simulations with Post-Newtonian Corrections," Journal of Physics, v.154, 2009, p. 012049.
Mikkola, S; Merritt, D. "Implementing few-body algorithmic regularization with post-Newtonian terms," ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL, v.135, 2008, p. 2398-2405.
Perets, Hagai. B.; Gualandris, Alessia; Merritt, David; Alexander, Tal. "Dynamical evolution of the young stars in the Galactic center .," Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana,, v.79, 2008, p. 1100.
Zhu, QF; Kudritzki, RP; Figer, DF; Najarro, F; Merritt, D. "Radial velocities of stars in the galactic center," ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, v.681, 2008, p. 1254-1278.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
Capuzzo-Dolcetta, R; Leccese, L; Merritt, D; Vicari, A. "Self-consistent models of triaxial cuspy galaxies with dark matter halos," in Conference on Pathways Through and Eclectic Universe., v.390, 2008, p. 491-492.
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