On the Existence of Pulsars in the Vicinity of the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center

Understand

Pulsars, if existing and detectable in the immediate vicinity of the massive black hole (MBH) in the Galactic center (GC), may be used as a superb tool to probe both the environment and the metric of the central MBH.

• The recent discovery of a magnetized pulsar in the GC suggests that many more pulsars should exist near the MBH.
• In this paper, we estimate the number and the orbital distribution of pulsars in the vicinity of the MBH in the GC by assuming that the pulsar progenitors, similar to the GC S-stars, were captured to orbits tightly bound to the MBH through the tidal breakup of stellar binaries.
• We use the current observations on both the GC S-stars and the hypervelocity stars to calibrate the injection rate(s) of and the dynamical model(s) for the stellar binaries.