Relativistic dynamics of stars near a supermassive black hole

Understand

General relativistic precession limits the ability of gravitational encounters to increase the eccentricity $e$ of orbits near a supermassive black hole (SBH).

• This "Schwarzschild barrier" (SB) has been shown to play an important role in the orbital evolution of stars like the galactic center S-stars.
• However, the evolution of orbits below the SB, $e>e_\mathrm{SB}$, is not well understood; the main current limitation is the computational complexity of detailed simulations.
• Here we present an $N$-body algorithm that allows us to efficiently integrate orbits of test stars around a SBH including general relativistic corrections to the equations of motion and interactions with a large ($\gtrsim 10^3$) number of field stars.