2004/03/05 by Holger Baumgardt, Baumgardt, Holger, Simon Portegies Zwart +9
Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0403140
8 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the "The Formation and Evolution of Massive Young Clusters" conference, Cancun, Mexico, 17 - 21 November, 2003
arxiv created 2004/03/05 · openalex publication_date 2004/03/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We have followed the evolution of multi-mass star clusters containing massive central black holes by N-body simulations on the GRAPE6 computers of Tokyo University. We find a strong cluster expansion and significant structural changes of the clusters. Star clusters with IMBHs have power-law density profiles rho ~ r-alpha with slopes alpha=1.55 inside the influence sphere of the central black hole. This leads to a constant density profile of bright stars in projection, which rules out the presence of intermediate mass black holes in core collapse clusters. If the star clusters are surrounded by a tidal field, a central IMBH speeds up the destruction of the cluster until a remnant of a few hundred stars remains, which stays bound to the IMBH for a long time. We also discuss the efficiency of different detection mechanisms for finding IMBHs in star clusters.