Stellar population and structure of the central 0.5 pc of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster
Tuan Do (Toronto) - April 22, 2013 at 12:10 pm
I will present recent results of laser guide star adaptive optics
imaging and spectroscopy from the Keck telescope of the central 0.5 pc
of the Milk Way nuclear star cluster. The Galactic center black hole
has a strong influence on the stellar dynamics and star formation in
this region, both of which have revealed unexpected results. It has
been recently shown that the
old stars (> 1 Gyr) have a surface density profile that is much flatter than
expected for the formation of stellar cusps around massive black
holes. Here, I present new spectroscopic results that show this flat
surface density profile extends out to at least 0.5 pc from the black
hole. In addition, Jeans modeling of the 3D kinematic data has placed much
stronger constraints on the slope of the true spatial density profile
of the old stars. I also report on the extinction and completeness
corrected luminosity functions for young stars in the stellar disk and
the B-type stars within 0.04 pc of the black hole, and their implication for the initial mass function of the
most recent star formation event at the Galactic center.
The seminar will be held in B-1 Hearst Field Annex.
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