Letters of Intent received in 2018

LoI 2020-2027
GA Symposia: Galactic Center: Relativity, Accretion and dynamics G-CRAC-D

Topics

Stellar and compact object dynamics in the presence of a supermassive black hole, General relativity, tidal disruption events, and accretion onto a supermassive black hole

Rationale

Nuclear star clusters around Massive Black Holes are likely the most collisional stellar systems in the universe. At the same time, they are embedded in an extremely deep gravitational potential well, often probing the relativistic regime. Consequently, unique stellar dynamical processes and interactions are expected to take place. The proximity of the Galactic Center provides a unique opportunity to study the variety of physical processes operating in the dense environment surrounding a Massive Black Hole, with immediate impacts for many other galactic nuclei. This has been enabled by a number of recent technological and observational advances, opening a new window on black hole physics. The time is now ripe collect the broader community of experts on galactic nuclei generally and the Galactic Center specifically to share and build upon this recent progress in our understanding of the role played by and dynamical processes near Massive Black Holes.

Nuclear star clusters around Massive Black Holes are likely the most collisional stellar systems in the universe. At the same time, they are embedded in an extremely deep gravitational potential well, often probing the relativistic regime. Consequently, unique stellar dynamical processes and interactions are expected to take place. Many surprises have already been found within 0.05 pc of the black hole in the Galactic Center, including (1) the perplexing population of young stars that are isotropically distributed (S-stars) in a region that is hostile to star formation, (2) the lack of old stars in this region in which a peaked cusp of stars was expected and (3) a new class of cold stars in this same region that are two orders of magnitude larger than typical stars (e.g., G2,G1 etc). The implication of these is tightly linked to the gas dynamics and accretion processes that take place in the galactic center.

The proposed conference will bring together scientists from the fields of multi-body dynamical evolution, stellar evolution, general relativity, accretion processes, and radio, optical and X-ray astronomy in order to foster and promote additional collaborations between these groups. The goal of our workshop is to provide an environment where these scientists can start new collaborations, present new ideas and discuss their implications for identifying the most important problems in the field and chart the field’s future direction.