AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 25. Black Holes, Dark Matter and X-ray Sources in Extragalactic Systems
Oral, Monday, January 7, 2002, 10:00-11:30am, International Ballroom East

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[25.01] Triaxial Galactic Nuclei with Supermassive Black Holes

M.Y. Poon, D. Merritt (Rutgers University)

We show that self-consistent, triaxial models for galactic nuclei containing supermassive black holes can be constructed. We first use Schwarzschild's method to find families of orbits that reproduce an assumed power-law mass distribution around a central point mass; the model axis ratios are 1.0 : 0.79 : 0.5 and we consider density laws of \rho~r-\gamma with \gamma=1,2. The models are found to be supported mostly by tube orbits. We then generate Monte-Carlo sets of initial conditions and integrate them forward in time using an N-body code. The models evolve only slightly and maintain their triaxial shapes. We discuss the observable properties of the models.


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