Study of the Science Capabilities of PRIMA in the Galactic Center

Abstract

The Phase-Referenced Imaging and Micro-arcsecond Astrometry (PRIMA) facility is scheduled for installation in the Very Large Telescope Interferometer observatory in Paranal, Chile, in the second half of 2008. Its goal is to provide astrometric accuracy in the micro-arcsecond range. High precision astrometry can be applied to explore the dynamics of the dense stellar cluster. Especially models for the formation of stars near super massive black holes or the fast transfer of short-lived massive stars into the innermost parsec of our galaxy can be tested. By measuring the orbits of stars close to the massive black hole one can probe deviations from a Keplerian motion. Such deviations could be due to a swarm of dark, stellar mass objects that perturb the point mass solution. At the same time the orbits are affected by relativistic corrections which thus can be tested. The ultimate goal is to test the effects of general relativity in the strong gravitational field. The latter can be probed with the near infrared flares of SgrA* which are most likely due to accretion phenomena onto the black hole. We study the expected performance of PRIMA for astrometric measurements in the Galactic Center based on laboratory measurements and discuss possible observing strategies.

arXiv commentPresentation at the SPIE 2008 conference "Optical and Infrared Interferometry"

References in corpus (14)

• Monitoring stellar orbits around the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center
• Stellar Orbits Around the Galactic Center Black Hole
• Near-infrared flares from accreting gas around the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre
• The Stellar Cusp Around the Supermassive Black Hole in the Galactic Center
• The structure of the nuclear stellar cluster of the Milky Way
• The need for a second black hole at the Galactic center
• JHKL Photometry and the K-band Luminosity Function at the Galactic Center
• Kinematics of the old stellar population at the Galactic Center
• A polarised infrared flare from Sagittarius A* and the signatures of orbiting plasma hotspots
• GCIRS16SW: a massive eclipsing binary in the Galactic Center
• A Black Hole in the Galactic Center Complex IRS 13E?
• IRS 13N: a new comoving group of sources at the Galactic Center
• Census of the Galactic Centre early-type stars using spectro-imagery
• GRAVITY: The AO-Assisted, Two-Object Beam-Combiner Instrument

Cited by in corpus (4)

• GRAVITY: getting to the event horizon of Sgr A*
• Constraining the dark cusp in the Galactic Center by long-period binaries
• The PRIMA fringe sensor unit
• Astrophysical Signatures of Black holes in Generalized Proca Theories