| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We investigated the formation of circumnuclear gas structures from the tidal disruption of molecular clouds in galactic nuclei, by means of smoothed particle hydrodynamics. Our results suggested a new method to infer the mass of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), and were published in the The Astrophysical Journal (Trani, Mapelli, Ballone, 2018, ApJ, 864, 17). We completed the development of TSUNAMI, the state of the art N-body code for black hole and planetary dynamics. We used TSUNAMI to propose and validate a new scenario to explain the origin of the S- stars, the 30 B-type stars in highly eccentric orbits around the SMBH in the Galactic center. The article was accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (Trani, Fujii, Spera, 2019, ApJ, 875, 42). Our code was also used to investigate the dynamical stability of newly observed planetary systems, which led to another publication (Livingston et al., including Trani, 2019, MNRAS, 484, 8). Furthermore, we investigated the role of the Keplerian tidal field generated by a SMBH on the three-body dynamics of stellar mass black holes. This manuscript has been submitted for peer-review.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
The detection of gravitational waves from coalescing black hole binaries has completely revolutionized our knowledge of astronomy, opening a new era of discovery and research perspectives. The astrophysical origin of gravitational wave sources is still under debate. Galactic nuclei are a promising nursery not just for mergers of stellar mass black hole binaries, detectable by current ground-based facilities (aLIGO, AdVirgo, KAGRA), but also for supermassive and intermediate mass black holes mergers, that will be detectable with forthcoming space-based observatories (LISA, DECIGO). The aim of next fiscal year’s project is to unravel the formation pathways of gravitational waves in galactic nuclei and provide theoretical models to interpret present and forthcoming gravitational wave observations. This goal will be achieved by means of numerical simulations employing the state-of-the-art code TSUNAMI. This research will shed light on the details of unexplored pathways for the formation of gravitational wave sources in galactic nuclei. These findings will contribute to a deeper understanding on the origin of gravitational wave events, and, ultimately, on the growth mechanisms of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei.
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