Effects of an Immortal Stellar Population in AGN Disks

Understand

Stars are likely embedded in the gas disks of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN).

• Theoretical models predict that in the inner regions of the disk these stars accrete rapidly, with fresh gas replenishing hydrogen in their cores faster than it is burned into helium, effectively stalling their evolution at hydrogen burning.
• We produce order-of-magnitude estimates of the number of such stars in a fiducial AGN disk.
• We find numbers of order $10^{2-4}$, confined to the inner $r_{\rm cap} \sim 3000 r_s \sim 0.03\rm pc$.