Publications (182)
The Frequency Function of Elliptical Galaxy Intrinsic Shapes
Benoit Tremblay, David Merritt
We present fully nonparametric estimates of the frequency function of elliptical galaxy intrinsic shapes under the axisymmetric and triaxial hypotheses. If elliptical galaxies are…
Tracing Black Hole Mergers Through Radio Lobe Morphology
David Merritt, R. D. Ekers
Binary supermassive black holes are produced by galactic mergers as the black holes from the two galaxies fall to the center of the merged system and form a bound pair. The two bla…
Equilibrium and Stability of Elliptical Galaxies
David Merritt, Tema Fridman
Recent work on the equilibrium and stability of ellipsoidal stellar systems is reviewed. The absence of constant-density cores in early-type galaxies implies that chaos and high-or…
A candidate sub-parsec binary black hole in the Seyfert galaxy NGC 7674
Preeti Kharb, Dharam Vir Lal, David Merritt
The existence of binary supermassive black holes (SBHs) is predicted by models of hierarchical galaxy formation. To date, only a single binary SBH has been imaged, at a projected s…
Planetary Nebulae as Probes of Dark Matter in NGC 3384
Benoit Tremblay, David Merritt, T. B. Williams
We have obtained radial velocities of 68 planetary nebulae surrounding the SB0 galaxy NGC 3384 in the Leo I group, using the CTIO 4 m telescope and the Rutgers Fabry-Perot interfer…
The Orbital Structure of Triaxial Galaxies with Figure Rotation
Alex T. Deibel, Monica Valluri, David Merritt
We survey the properties of all orbit families in the rotating frame of a family of realistic triaxial potentials with central supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In such galaxies, m…
Self-Consistent Gravitational Chaos
David Merritt, Monica Valluri
The motion of stars in the gravitational potential of a triaxial galaxy is generically chaotic. However, the timescale over which the chaos manifests itself in the orbital motion i…
Efficient Merger of Binary Supermassive Black Holes in Non-Axisymmetric Galaxies
Peter Berczik, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem +1
Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-term evolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution s…
Brownian Motion of Black Holes in Dense Nuclei
David Merritt, Peter Berczik, Frederik Laun
We evaluate the Brownian motion of a massive particle ("black hole") at the center of a galaxy using N-body simulations. Our galaxy models have power-law central density cusps like…
Evolution Of Massive Black Hole Binaries In Rotating Stellar Nuclei: Implications For Gravitational Wave Detection
Alexander Rasskazov, David Merritt
We compute the isotropic gravitational wave (GW) background produced by binary supermassive black holes (SBHs) in galactic nuclei. In our model, massive binaries evolve at early ti…
Elliptical Galaxy Dynamics
David Merritt
A review of elliptical galaxy dynamics, with a focus on nonintegrable models. Topics covered include torus construction; modelling axisymmetric galaxies; triaxiality; collisionless…
Empirical models for Dark Matter Halos. I. Nonparametric Construction of Density Profiles and Comparison with Parametric Models
David Merritt, Alister W. Graham, Ben Moore +2
We use techniques from nonparametric function estimation theory to extract the density profiles, and their derivatives, from a set of N-body dark matter halos. We consider halos ge…
Algorithmic regularization with velocity-dependent forces
Seppo Mikkola, David Merritt
Algorithmic regularization uses a transformation of the equations of motion such that the leapfrog algorithm produces exact trajectories for two-body motion as well as regular resu…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. I. Introduction to the Survey
Patrick Cote, John P. Blakeslee, Laura Ferrarese +7
The Virgo Cluster is the dominant mass concentration in the Local Supercluster and the largest collection of elliptical and lenticular galaxies in the nearby universe. In this pape…
Evidence from Intrinsic Shapes for Two Families of Elliptical Galaxies
Benoit Tremblay, David Merritt
Bright elliptical galaxies have a markedly different distribution of Hubble types than faint ellipticals; the division occurs near M_B=-20 and bright ellipticals are rounder on ave…
Interaction of Supermassive Black Holes with their Stellar and Dark Matter Environments
David Merritt
A review of recent theoretical work on the interactions of supermassive single and binary black holes with their nuclear environments, highlighting ways in which the observed struc…
Non-integrable galactic dynamics
David Merritt
Orbital and self-consistent dynamics of non-integrable galaxy models are reviewed. Topics covered include torus construction; resonances; triaxial systems with central singularitie…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. XIII. SBF Distance Catalog and the Three-Dimensional Structure of the Virgo Cluster
Simona Mei, John Blakeslee, Patrick Cote +7
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey consists of HST ACS imaging for 100 early-type galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, observed in the F475W and F850LP filters. We derive distances for 84 of t…
Supermassive Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei. I. The Consistency of Black Hole Masses in Quiescent and Active Galaxies
Laura Ferrarese, Richard W. Pogge, Bradley M. Peterson +3
We report the first results of a program to measure accurate stellar velocity dispersions in the bulges of the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) for which accurate bla…
Dynamical Modelling of Hot Stellar Systems
David Merritt
Estimation of the distribution function f and potential Phi of hot stellar systems from kinematical data is discussed. When the functional forms of f and Phi are not specified a pr…
Black Holes and Galaxy Evolution
David Merritt
Supermassive binary black holes and their influence on the structure and evolution of galaxies is reviewed.
Gravitational Encounters and the Evolution of Galactic Nuclei. I. Method
David Merritt
An algorithm is described for evolving the phase-space density of stars or compact objects around a massive black hole at the center of a galaxy. The technique is based on numerica…
Searching for the Kinematical Signature of a Black Hole in M87
David Merritt, Siang Peng Oh
Many theories for the formation of massive black holes in galactic nuclei predict that the stellar motions should be anisotropic within the radius of influence of the black hole. W…
Efficient Merger of Binary Supermassive Black Holes in Merging Galaxies
Fazeel Khan, Andreas Just, David Merritt
In spherical galaxies, binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have difficulty reaching sub-parsec separations due to depletion of stars on orbits that intersect the massive binary…
The nature of the HE0450-2958 System
David Merritt, Thaisa Storchi Bergmann, Andrew Robinson +3
Magain et al. (2005) argued that the host galaxy of the quasar in HE0450-2958 is substantially under-luminous given the likely mass of its nuclear black hole. Using kinematical inf…
Contribution of Stellar Tidal Disruptions to the X-Ray Luminosity Function of Active Galaxies
Milos Milosavljevic, David Merritt, Luis C. Ho
The luminosity function of active galactic nuclei has been measured down to luminosities ~10^{42} erg/s in the soft and hard X-rays. Some fraction of this activity is associated wi…
Dynamics of Triaxial Stellar Systems
David Merritt
Recent work on the dynamics of triaxial stellar systems is reviewed. The motion of boxlike orbits in realistic triaxial potentials is generically stochastic. The degree to which th…
Tidal breakup of binary stars at the Galactic Center. II. Hydrodynamic simulations
Fabio Antonini, James C. Lombardi, David Merritt
In Paper I, we followed the evolution of binary stars as they orbited near the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the Galactic center, noting the cases in which the two stars would…
Ejection of Supermassive Black Holes from Galaxy Cores
Alessia Gualandris, David Merritt
[Abridged] Recent numerical relativity simulations have shown that the emission of gravitational waves during the merger of two supermassive black holes (SMBHs) delivers a kick to…
Considerations on how to investigate planes of satellite galaxies
Marcel S. Pawlowski, Jörg Dabringhausen, Benoit Famaey +11
The existence of a spatially thin, kinematically coherent Disk of Satellites (DoS) around the Milky Way (MW), is a problem that often garners vivacious debate in the literature or…
The final-parsec problem in the collisionless limit
Eugene Vasiliev, Fabio Antonini, David Merritt
A binary supermassive black hole loses energy via ejection of stars in a galactic nucleus, until emission of gravitational waves becomes strong enough to induce rapid coalescence.…
Dynamics of galaxy cores and supermassive black holes
David Merritt
Recent work on the dynamical evolution of galactic nuclei containing supermassive black holes is reviewed. Topics include galaxy structural properties; collisionless and collisiona…
Single and Binary Black Holes and their Influence on Nuclear Structure
David Merritt
Massive central objects affect both the structure and evolution of galactic nuclei. Adiabatic growth of black holes generates power-law central density profiles with logarithmic sl…
Empirical Models for Dark Matter Halos. III. The Kormendy relation and the log(rho_e)-log(R_e) relation
Alister W. Graham, David Merritt, Ben Moore +2
We have recently shown that the 3-parameter density-profile model from Prugniel & Simien provides a better fit to simulated, galaxy- and cluster-sized, dark matter halos than an NF…
On the origins of enigmatic stellar populations in Local Group galactic nuclei
Nathan W. C. Leigh, Fabio Antonini, Nicholas C. Stone +2
We consider the origins of enigmatic stellar populations in four Local Group galactic nuclei, specifically the Milky Way, M31, M32 and M33. These are centrally concentrated blue st…
Large Merger Recoils and Spin Flips From Generic Black-Hole Binaries
Manuela Campanelli, Carlos O. Lousto, Yosef Zlochower +1
We report the first results from evolutions of a generic black-hole binary, i.e. a binary containing unequal mass black holes with misaligned spins. Our configuration, which has a…
Probing Quiescent Massive Black Holes: Insights from Tidal Disruption Events
Suvi Gezari, Linda Strubbe, Joshua S. Bloom +10
Tidal disruption events provide a unique probe of quiescent black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies. The next generation of synoptic surveys will yield a large sample of flar…
The S-Star Cluster at the Center of the Milky Way: On the nature of diffuse NIR emission in the inner tenth of a parsec
Nadeen Sabha, Andreas Eckart, David Merritt +9
Sagittarius A*, the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is surrounded by a small cluster of high velocity stars, known as the S-stars. We aim to constrain the…
Merger of Massive Black Holes using N-Body Simulations with Post-Newtonian Corrections
Miguel Preto, Ingo Berentzen, Peter Berczik +2
We present preliminary results from self-consistent, high resolution direct {\it N}-body simulations of massive black hole binaries in mergers of galactic nuclei. The dynamics of t…
Model Atmospheres for Irradiated Giant Stars: Implications for the Galactic Center
Raul Jimenez, Juliana P. da Silva, S. Peng Oh +2
Irradiation of a stellar atmosphere by an external source (e.g. an AGN) changes its structure and therefore its spectrum. Using a state-of-the-art stellar atmosphere code, we calcu…
A Counterpart to the Radial Orbit Instability in Triaxial Stellar Systems
Fabio Antonini, Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta, David Merritt
Self-consistent solutions for triaxial mass models are highly non-unique. In general, some of these solutions might be dynamically unstable, making them inappropriate as descriptio…
Consequences of gravitational radiation recoil
David Merritt, Milos Milosavljevic, Marc Favata +2
Coalescing binary black holes experience an impulsive kick due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves. We discuss the dynamical consequences of the recoil accompanying mass…
Galactic Mergers with Supermassive Black Holes
Fidel Cruz, David Merritt
We present the results of N-body simulations of the accretion of high-density dwarf galaxies by low-density giant galaxies. Both galaxies contain power-law central density cusps an…
Loss Cone Dynamics
David Merritt
Supermassive black holes can capture or disrupt stars that come sufficiently close. This article reviews the dynamical processes by which stars or stellar remnants are placed onto…
The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. I. Introduction to the Survey and Data Reduction Procedures
Andres Jordan, John P. Blakeslee, Patrick Cote +7
The Fornax Cluster is a conspicuous cluster of galaxies in the southern hemisphere and the second largest collection of early-type galaxies within <~ 20 Mpc after the Virgo Cluster…
Time-Dependent Models for Dark Matter at the Galactic Center
Gianfranco Bertone, David Merritt
The prospects of indirect detection of dark matter at the galactic center depend sensitively on the mass profile within the inner parsec. We calculate the distribution of dark matt…
The final-parsec problem in non-spherical galaxies revisited
Eugene Vasiliev, Fabio Antonini, David Merritt
We consider the evolution of supermassive black hole binaries at the center of spherical, axisymmetric, and triaxial galaxies, using direct N-body integrations as well as analytic…
Implementing Few-Body Algorithmic Regularization with Post-Newtonian Terms
Seppo Mikkola, David Merritt
We discuss the implementation of a new regular algorithm for simulation of the gravitational few-body problem. The algorithm uses components from earlier methods, including the cha…
Evolution of Nuclear Star Clusters
David Merritt
Two-body relaxation times of nuclear star clusters are short enough that gravitational encounters should substantially affect their structure in 10 Gyr or less. In nuclear star clu…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey IX: The Color Distributions of Globular Cluster Systems in Early-Type Galaxies
Eric W. Peng, Andres Jordan, Patrick Cote +7
We present the color distributions of globular cluster (GC) systems for 100 Virgo cluster early-type galaxies observed in the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. The color distributions of i…
Probing Stellar Dynamics in Galactic Nuclei
M. Coleman Miller, Tal Alexander, Pau Amaro-Seoane +7
Electromagnetic observations over the last 15 years have yielded a growing appreciation for the importance of supermassive black holes (SMBH) to the evolution of galaxies, and for…
Henry Kandrup's Ideas About Relaxation of Stellar Systems
David Merritt
Henry Kandrup wrote prolifically on the problem of relaxation of stellar systems. His picture of relaxation was significantly more refined than the standard description in terms of…
The Stellar Dynamics of Omega Centauri
David Merritt, G. Meylan, M. Mayor
The stellar dynamics of Omega Centauri are inferred from the radial velocities of 469 stars measured with CORAVEL (Mayor et al. 1997). Rather than fit the data to a family of model…
Dark Matter Dynamics and Indirect Detection
Gianfranco Bertone, David Merritt
Non-baryonic, or "dark," matter is believed to be a major component of the total mass budget of the universe. We review the candidates for particle dark matter and discuss the pros…
Black Hole Demographics from the M(BH)-sigma Relation
David Merritt, Laura Ferrarese
We analyze a sample of 32 galaxies for which a dynamical estimate of the mass of the hot stellar component, M_bulge, is available. For each of these galaxies, we calculate the mass…
Martin Schwarzschild's Contributions to Galaxy Dynamics
David Merritt
A retrospective of Martin Schwarzschild's work on galaxy dynamics.
Stellar Dynamics and Black Holes
David Merritt
Chandrasekhar's most important contribution to stellar dynamics was the concept of dynamical friction. I briefly review that work, then discuss some implications of Chandrasekhar's…
Tidal Disruption Flares from Recoiling Supermassive Black Holes
Stefanie Komossa, David Merritt
Supermassive black holes ejected from galaxy nuclei by gravitational wave recoil will carry a retinue of bound stars, even in the absence of an accretion disk. We discuss the obser…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey III. Chandra and HST Observations of Low-Mass X-Ray Binaries and Globular Clusters in M87
Andres Jordan, Patrick Cote, Laura Ferrarese +7
The ACIS instrument on board the Chandra X-ray Observatory has been used to carry out the first systematic study of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) in M87. We identify 174 X-ray po…
On the persistence of two small-scale problems in ÎCDM
Marcel S. Pawlowski, Benoit Famaey, David Merritt +1
We investigate the degree to which the inclusion of baryonic physics can overcome two long-standing problems of the standard cosmological model on galaxy scales: (i) the problem of…
Revised Rates of Stellar Disruption in Galactic Nuclei
Jianxiang Wang, David Merritt
We compute rates of tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, using downwardly-revised black hole masses from the M-sigma relation. In galaxies with…
Towards relativistic orbit fitting of Galactic center stars and pulsars
Raymond Angelil, Prasenjit Saha, David Merritt
The S stars orbiting the Galactic center black hole reach speeds of up to a few percent the speed of light during pericenter passage. This makes, for example, S2 at pericenter much…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey II. Data Reduction Procedures
Andres Jordan, John P. Blakeslee, Eric W. Peng +7
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey is a large program to carry out multi-color imaging of 100 early-type members of the Virgo Cluster using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the H…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VII. Resolving the Connection Between Globular Clusters and Ultra-Compact Dwarf Galaxies
Monica Hasegan, Andres Jordan, Patrick Cote +10
We investigate the connection between globular clusters and ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs) by examining the properties of several compact objects associated with M87, all of w…
Dissipationless Formation and Evolution of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster
Fabio Antonini, Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta, Alessandra Mastrobuono-Battisti +1
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 nucleu…
Recovering Velocity Distributions via Penalized Likelihood
David Merritt
Line-of-sight velocity distributions are crucial for unravelling the dynamics of hot stellar systems. We present a new formalism based on penalized likelihood for deriving such dis…
Tidal break-up of binary stars at the Galactic center and its consequences
Fabio Antonini, Joshua Faber, Alessia Gualandris +1
The tidal breakup of binary star systems by the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the center of the galaxy has been suggested as the source of both the observed sample of hypervelo…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. XIV. Analysis of Color-Magnitude Relations in Globular Cluster Systems
Steffen Mieske, Andres Jordan, Patrick Cote +8
We examine the correlation between globular cluster (GC) color and magnitude using HST/ACS imaging for a sample of 79 early-type galaxies (-21.7<M_B<-15.2 mag) with accurate SBF di…
Resonant Orbits in Triaxial Galaxies
David Merritt, Monica Valluri
Box orbits in triaxial potentials are generically thin, that is, they lie close in phase space to a resonant orbit satisfying a relation of the form lÏ_1 +mÏ_2+nÏ_3=0 between th…
Dynamical Evolution of Elliptical Galaxies with Central Singularities
David Merritt, Gerald Quinlan
We study the effect of a massive central singularity on the structure of a triaxial galaxy using N-body simulations. Starting from a single initial model, we grow black holes with…
Periodic Orbits in Triaxial Galaxies with Weak Cusps
Tema Fridman, David Merritt
The orbital structure of triaxial models with weak central density cusps, , is investigated. The stability of the - (long-) axis orbit -- and hence…
Orbital instability and relaxation in stellar systems
Monica Valluri, David Merritt
The orbits of stars in galaxies are generically chaotic: the chaotic behavior arises in part from the intrinsically grainy nature of a potential that is composed of point masses. E…
Brownian Motion of a Massive Binary
David Merritt
The dynamical friction and diffusion coefficients are derived for a massive binary that moves against a uniform background of stars. The random impulses exerted on the binary's cen…
Gravitational Wave Recoil Oscillations of Black Holes: Implications for Unified Models of Active Galactic Nuclei
S. Komossa, David Merritt
We consider the consequences of gravitational wave recoil for unified models of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Spatial oscillations of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) around the c…
Systolic and Hyper-Systolic Algorithms for the Gravitational N-Body Problem, with an Application to Brownian Motion
E. N. Dorband, Marc Hemsendorf, David Merritt
A systolic algorithm rhythmically computes and passes data through a network of processors. We investigate the performance of systolic algorithms for implementing the gravitational…
Dynamics of Dark Matter Cusps
David Merritt, Milos Milosavljevic
Formation and disruption of dark-matter cusps are reviewed. Accumulation of baryons at the center of a halo can displace the dark matter, converting singular density cusps into low…
Gravitational Encounters and the Evolution of Galactic Nuclei. II. Classical and Resonant Relaxation
David Merritt
Direct numerical integrations of the Fokker-Planck equation in energy-angular momentum space are carried out for stars orbiting a supermassive black hole (SBH) at the center of a g…
N-Body Growth of a Bahcall-Wolf Cusp Around a Black Hole
Miguel Preto, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem
We present a clear N-body realization of the growth of a Bahcall-Wolf f ~ E^0.25 (rho ~ 1/r^1.75) density cusp around a massive object ("black hole") at the center of a stellar sys…
No Supermassive Black Hole in M33?
David Merritt, Laura Ferrarese, Charles L. Joseph
We analyze optical long-slit spectroscopy of the nucleus of M33 obtained from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. Rather than the steep rise…
A Universal Density Profile for Dark and Luminous Matter?
David Merritt, Julio F. Navarro, Aaron Ludlow +1
We explore similarities in the luminosity distribution of early type galaxies and the mass profiles of LCDM halos. The spatial structure of these systems may be accurately describe…
Hypercompact Stellar Systems Around Recoiling Supermassive Black Holes
David Merritt, Jeremy D. Schnittman, Stefanie Komossa
A supermassive black hole ejected from the center of a galaxy by gravitational wave recoil carries a retinue of bound stars - a "hypercompact stellar system" (HCSS). The numbers an…
An Instability in Triaxial Stellar Systems
Fabio Antonini, Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta, David Merritt
The radial-orbit instability is a collective phenomenon that has heretofore only been observed in spherical systems. We find that this instability occurs also in triaxial systems,…
Mass Deficits, Stalling Radii, and the Merger Histories of Elliptical Galaxies
David Merritt
A binary supermassive black hole leaves an imprint on a galactic nucleus in the form of a "mass deficit," a decrease in the mass of the nucleus due to ejection of stars by the bina…
The Low End of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function: Constraining the Mass of a Nuclear Black Hole in NGC 205 via Stellar Kinematics
Monica Valluri, Laura Ferrarese, David Merritt +1
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images and spectra of the nucleated dwarf elliptical galaxy NGC 205 are combined with 3-integral axisymmetric dynamical models to constrain the mass (M…
Loss Cone Refilling Rates in Galactic Nuclei
David Merritt, Jianxiang Wang
A gap in phase space is opened up by a binary supermassive black hole as it ejects stars in a galactic nucleus. This gap must be refilled before the single black hole that subseque…
Triaxial Black-Hole Nuclei
M. Y. Poon, David Merritt
We demonstrate that the nuclei of galaxies containing supermassive black holes can be triaxial in shape. Schwarzschild's method was first used to construct self-consistent orbital…
Galaxies and Black Holes
David Merritt
Supermassive black holes containing ~0.5% of the stellar mass of their host galaxies appear to be ubiquitous components of galactic nuclei. The gravitational force from these centr…
Long-Term Evolution of Massive Black Hole Binaries. II. Binary Evolution in Low-Density Galaxies
Peter Berczik, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem
We use direct-summation N-body integrations to follow the evolution of binary black holes at the centers of galaxy models with large, constant-density cores. Particle numbers as la…
Supermassive Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Calibration of the M-sigma Relationship for AGNs
Christopher A. Onken, Laura Ferrarese, David Merritt +5
We calibrate reverberation-based black hole masses in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by using the correlation between black hole mass, M, and bulge/spheroid stellar velocity dispers…
Dynamics around supermassive black holes
Alessia Gualandris, David Merritt
The dynamics of galactic nuclei reflects the presence of supermassive black holes (SBHs) in many ways. Single SBHs act as sinks, destroying a mass in stars equal to their own mass…
The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey V: SBF Calibration for Giant and Dwarf Early-type Galaxies
Simona Mei, John P. Blakeslee, John L. Tonry +7
As part of the Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS) Virgo Cluster Survey, we have measured Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) in a sample of 100 early-type Virgo galaxies. Distances…
Dynamical Cusp Regeneration
David Merritt, Andras Szell
After being destroyed by a binary supermassive black hole, a stellar density cusp can regrow at the center of a galaxy via energy exchange between stars moving in the gravitational…
A Note on Gravitational Brownian Motion
David Merritt
Chandrasekhar's theory of stellar encounters predicts a dependence of the Brownian motion of a massive particle on the velocity distribution of the perturbing stars. One consequenc…
Dark Matter Spikes and Annihilation Radiation from the Galactic Center
David Merritt, Milos Milosavljevic, Licia Verde +1
The annihilation rate of weakly interacting cold dark matter particles at the galactic center could be greatly enhanced by the growth of a density spike around the central supermas…
Testing Properties of the Galactic Center Black Hole Using Stellar Orbits
David Merritt, Tal Alexander, Seppo Mikkola +1
The spin and quadrupole moment of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center can in principle be measured via astrometric monitoring of stars orbiting at milliparsec (mpc)…
Formation of Galactic Nuclei
Milos Milosavljevic, David Merritt
We investigate a model in which galactic nuclei form via the coalescence of pre-existing stellar systems containing supermassive black holes. Merger simulations are carried out usi…
Evolution of the Density Profiles of Dark Matter Haloes
Darren Reed, Fabio Governato, Licia Verde +5
We use numerical simulations in a Lambda CDM cosmology to model density profiles in a set of 16 dark matter haloes with resolutions of up to 7 million particles within the virial r…
Co-orbiting satellite galaxy structures are still in conflict with the distribution of primordial dwarf galaxies
Marcel S. Pawlowski, Benoit Famaey, Helmut Jerjen +11
Both major galaxies in the Local Group host planar distributions of co-orbiting satellite galaxies, the Vast Polar Structure (VPOS) of the Milky Way and the Great Plane of Andromed…
Consequences of Triaxiality for Gravitational Wave Recoil of black holes
Alessandro Vicari, Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta, David Merritt
Coalescing binary black holes experience a ``kick'' due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves with an amplitude as great as 200$ km/s. We examine the orbital evolution of…
The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. II. The Central Brightness Profiles of Early-Type Galaxies: A Characteristic Radius on Nuclear Scales and the Transition from Central Luminosity Deficit to Excess
Patrick Cote, Laura Ferrarese, Andres Jordan +9
We analyse HST surface brightness profiles for 143 early-type galaxies in the Virgo and Fornax Clusters. Sersic models provide accurate descriptions of the global profiles with a n…