2005/12/13 by Kelly Holley‐Bockelmann, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, Holley-Bockelmann, Kelly +12
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Mechanics and Biomechanics Studies #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0512344
4 pages, 3 color figures. Submitted to ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2005/12/13 · openalex publication_date 2005/12/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Hypervelocity stars have been recently discovered in the outskirts of galaxies, such as the unbound star in the Milky Way halo, or the three anomalously fast intracluster planetary nebulae (ICPNe) in the Virgo Cluster. These may have been ejected by close 3-body interactions with a binary supermassive black hole (SMBBH), where a star which passes within the semimajor axis of the SMBBH can receive enough energy to eject it from the system. Stars ejected by SMBBHs may form a significant sub-population with very different kinematics and mean metallicity than the bulk of the intracluster stars. The number, kinematics, and orientation of the ejected stars may constrain the mass ratio, semimajor axis, and even the orbital plane of the SMBBH. We investigate the evolution of the ejected debris from a SMBBH within a clumpy and time-dependent cluster potential using a high resolution, self-consistent cosmological N-body simulation of a galaxy cluster. We show that the predicted number and kinematic signature of the fast Virgo ICPNe is consistent with 3-body scattering by a SMBBH with a mass ratio 10:1 at the center of M87.