Dissipationless Formation and Evolution of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster

Understand

Abridged: In one widely discussed model for the formation of nuclear star clusters (NSCs), massive globular clusters spiral into the center of a galaxy and merge to form the nucleus.

• It is now known that at least some NSCs coexist with supermassive black holes (SBHs); this is the case, for instance, in the Milky Way (MW).
• In this paper, we investigate how the presence of a SMBH at the center of the MW impacts the merger hypothesis for the formation of its NSC.
• Starting from a model consisting of a low-density nuclear stellar disk and the SMBH, we use N-body simulations to follow the successive inspiral and merger of globular clusters.