Galactic Centre star formation: the case of the missing gas disc

Abstract

We study the dynamical evolution of stars and gas close to the centre of the Milky Way. Any plausible means of forming the young stars observed at the Galactic Centre leaves behind a residual gas disc at ~0.01pc radii. We show that the combined effects of viscous accretion and gravitational interactions with stars do not remove the residual gas efficiently, and that a substantial gas disc, interior to the stellar disc, persists for >10Myr after the stars form. Since no such disc is currently seen at the Galactic Centre we argue that it has been accreted by the super-massive black hole. This scenario offers an attractive connection between nuclear star formation and black hole feeding, and we suggest that the "missing" gas may have been used to power Sgr A*.

7 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (14)

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Physics of the Galactic Center Cloud G2, on its Way towards the Super-Massive Black Hole
• Fermi Bubbles in the Milky Way: the closest AGN feedback laboratory courtesy of Sgr A*?
• In situ formation of SgrA* stars via disk fragmentation: parent cloud properties and thermodynamics
• Magnetically-levitating disks around supermassive black holes
• A rapid evolving region in the Galactic Center: Why S-stars thermalize and more massive stars are missing
• Disk-satellite interaction in disks with density gaps
• Star Formation and Dynamics in the Galactic Centre
• Perturbations induced by a molecular cloud on the young stellar disc in the Galactic Centre
• On the origin of the central 1" hole in the stellar disk of Sgr A* and the Fermi gamma-ray bubbles
• Sculpting the Stellar Cusp in the Galactic Center