Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Creating an Eccentric Nuclear Disk of Stars with Two Black Holes

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https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/79407z26d
Abstract
  • The Andromeda galaxy (M31) hosts a peculiar nucleus. The stars in M31's galactic center swirl about a super-massive black hole on aligned, elongated orbits - a structure called an eccentric nuclear disk. Hubble Space Telescope observations indicate that up to twenty percent of nearby galaxies exhibit features consistent with eccentric nuclear disks. Scientists remain unsure, however, of how eccentric nuclear disks form. This paper explores a new theoretical idea that an eccentric nuclear disk can form during the merger of two galaxies when two black holes inspiral towards each other. Our theory is motivated by earlier work from Thomasson(1989) which showed the development of asymmetries in galactic disks when encountering large companions, and here we apply similar dynamics to galactic nuclei. We present analytic calculations and use the open source N-body integrator REBOUND to model the gravitational interaction between two black holes, one of which has a circular stellar disk. We find that an eccentric nuclear disk forms when the precession period of the stellar disk is in resonance with the orbital period of the black hole companion. 

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  • 2021-11-03
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  • 2021-11-11
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