ORBITS AROUND BLACK HOLES IN TRIAXIAL NUCLEI

Journal Article · Mon Jan 10 04:00:00 EST 2011 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/726/2/61· OSTI ID:21567684

Merritt, David ^[1]; Vasiliev, Eugene ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623 (United States)
2. Lebedev Physical Institute, Leninsky prospekt 53, Moscow (Russian Federation)

We discuss the properties of orbits within the influence sphere of a supermassive black hole (BH), in the case that the surrounding star cluster is non-axisymmetric. There are four major orbit families; one of these, the pyramid orbits, have the interesting property that they can approach arbitrarily closely to the BH. We derive the orbit-averaged equations of motion and show that in the limit of weak triaxiality, the pyramid orbits are integrable: the motion consists of a two-dimensional libration of the major axis of the orbit about the short axis of the triaxial figure, with eccentricity varying as a function of the two orientation angles and reaching unity at the corners. Because pyramid orbits occupy the lowest angular momentum regions of phase space, they compete with collisional loss cone repopulation and with resonant relaxation (RR) in supplying matter to BHs. General relativistic advance of the periapse dominates the precession for sufficiently eccentric orbits, and we show that relativity imposes an upper limit to the eccentricity: roughly the value at which the relativistic precession time is equal to the time for torques to change the angular momentum. We argue that this upper limit to the eccentricity should also apply to evolution driven by RR, with potentially important consequences for the rate of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals in low-luminosity galaxies. In giant galaxies, we show that capture of stars on pyramid orbits can dominate the feeding of BHs, at least until such a time as the pyramid orbits are depleted; however this time can be of order a Hubble time.

• OSTI ID: 21567684
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 726; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
BLACK HOLES
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS OF MOTION
GALAXIES
ORBITS
PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
STAR CLUSTERS