Can a satellite galaxy merger explain the active past of the Galactic Centre?

2011/07/31 by Meagan Lang, Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, Kelly Holley‐Bockelmann +6
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Galactic Center #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Galaxy merger #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Milky Way #Physics #Quasar #Redshift #Satellite galaxy #Supermassive black hole #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/sts638

9 pages, 1 figure, accepted by MNRAS. Comments are welcome

openalex publication_date 2013/02/04 · arxiv created 2013/02/06 · arxiv updated 2016/03/02 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Observations of the Galactic Centre (GC) have accumulated a multitude of ‘forensic’ evidence indicating that several million years ago the centre of the Milky Way galaxy was teeming with star formation and accretion-powered activity – this paints a rather different picture from the GC as we understand it today. We examine a possibility that this epoch of activity could have been triggered by the infall of a satellite galaxy into the Milky Way which began at the redshift of z = 8 and ended a few million years ago with a merger of the Galactic supermassive black hole with an intermediate-mass black hole brought in by the inspiralling satellite.

Citations

• Hypervelocity Stars and the Galactic Center
• The Proper Motion of Sagittarius A*. II. The Mass of Sagittarius A*
• Halos and galaxies in the standard cosmological model: results from the Bolshoi simulation
• On the orbits of infalling satellite haloes
• The Milky Way's Fermi bubbles: echoes of the last quasar outburst?
• A FIRST LOOK AT GALAXY FLYBY INTERACTIONS. I. CHARACTERIZING THE FREQUENCY OF FLYBYS IN A COSMOLOGICAL CONTEXT
• The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VI. Isophotal Analysis and the Structure of Early‐Type Galaxies
• Large Merger Recoils and Spin Flips From Generic Black-Hole Binaries
• Destruction of the Galactic Globular Cluster System
• Orbital Evolution of an IMBH in the Galactic Nucleus with a Massive Central Black Hole
• The Need for a Second Black Hole at the Galactic Center
• Chaotic Loss Cones and Black Hole Fueling
• Star Formation Around Supermassive Black Holes
• GRAVITATIONAL WAVE SIGNAL FROM ASSEMBLING THE LIGHTEST SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES
• Discovery of an Unbound Hypervelocity Star in the Milky Way Halo
• The Radical Consequences of Realistic Satellite Orbits for the Heating and Implied Merger Histories of Galactic Disks
• A common mass scale for satellite galaxies of the Milky Way
• Star formation efficiency in galaxy interactions and mergers: a statistical study
• The Formation of the First Stars. I. The Primordial Star‐forming Cloud
• The Ecology of Star Clusters and Intermediate‐Mass Black Holes in the Galactic Bulge
• Formation of the First Supermassive Black Holes
• Mass and Redshift Dependence of Dark Halo Structure
• Formation of Galactic Nuclei
• Effect of Reionization on Structure Formation in the Universe
• Large scale inhomogeneity and local dynamical friction
• Supermassive black hole binaries in gaseous and stellar circumnuclear discs: orbital dynamics and gas accretion
• Gravitational Radiation from Intermediate‐Mass Black Holes
• The Kinematics of the Ultra‐faint Milky Way Satellites: Solving the Missing Satellite Problem