paper

Perturbations induced by a molecular cloud on the young stellar disc in the Galactic Centre

arXiv:1310.0024 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stt1858

Abstract

The Galactic centre (GC) is a crowded environment: observations have revealed the presence of (molecular, atomic and ionized) gas, of a cusp of late-type stars, and of ~100 early-type stars, about half of which lying in one or possibly two discs. In this paper, we study the perturbations exerted on a thin stellar disc (with outer radius ~0.4 pc) by a molecular cloud that falls towards the GC and is disrupted by the supermassive black hole (SMBH). The initial conditions for the stellar disc were drawn from the results of previous simulations of molecular cloud infall and disruption in the SMBH potential. We find that most of the gas from the disrupted molecular cloud settles into a dense and irregular disc surrounding the SMBH. If the gas disc and the stellar disc are slightly misaligned (~5-20 deg), the precession of the stellar orbits induced by the gas disc significantly increases the inclinations of the stellar orbits (by a factor of ~3-5 in 1.5 Myr) with respect to the normal vector to the disc. Furthermore, the distribution of orbit inclinations becomes significantly broader. These results might be the clue to explain the broad distribution of observed inclinations of the early-type stars with respect to the normal vector of the main disc. We discuss the implications for the possibility that fresh gas was accreted by the GC after the formation of the disc(s) of early-type stars.

12 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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