AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 181 Probing the Galactic Center
Poster, Thursday, 9:20am-4:00pm, January 12, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[181.14] A Disk Origin for S-Stars in the Galactic Center?

G. Haislip, A. N. Youdin (Princeton University)

Young massive stars in the central 0.5" of our Galaxy probe dynamics around supermassive black holes, and challenge our understanding of star formation in extreme environments. Recent observations (Ghez et al. 2005, Eisenhauer et al. 2005) show large eccentricities and a seemingly random distribution of inclinations, which seems to contradict formation in a disk. We investigate scenarios in which the massive S-stars are born with circular, coplanar orbits and perturbed to their current relaxed state. John Chambers' MERCURY code is modified to include post-Newtonian corrections to the gravitational central force of a Schwarzchild hole and Lense-Thirring precession about a Kerr black hole. The role of resonant relaxation (Rauch & Tremaine, 1996) of angular momentum between S-stars and a background stellar halo is studied in this context.


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