Fast-moving stars around an intermediate-mass black hole in Omega Centauri

Abstract

Black holes have been found over a wide range of masses, from stellar remnants with masses of 5-150 solar masses (Msun), to those found at the centers of galaxies with $M>10^5$ Msun. However, only a few debated candidate black holes exist between 150 and $10^5$ Msun. Determining the population of these intermediate-mass black holes is an important step towards understanding supermassive black hole formation in the early universe. Several studies have claimed the detection of a central black hole in $\omega$ Centauri, the Milky Way's most massive globular cluster. However, these studies have been questioned due to the possible mass contribution of stellar mass black holes, their sensitivity to the cluster center, and the lack of fast-moving stars above the escape velocity. Here we report observations of seven fast-moving stars in the central 3 arcseconds (0.08 pc) of $\omega$ Centauri. The velocities of the fast-moving stars are significantly higher than the expected central escape velocity of the star cluster, so their presence can only be explained by being bound to a massive black hole. From the velocities alone, we can infer a firm lower limit of the black hole mass of $\sim$8,200 Msun, making this a compelling candidate for an intermediate-mass black hole in the local universe.

33 pages, 11 figures, and 2 tables. Published in Nature. This is the accepted author's version including the correction issued on Sep 17, 2024. The version of record is available from the Journal (open access)

References in corpus (57)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Array Programming with NumPy
• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• PARSEC: stellar tracks and isochrones with the PAdova and TRieste Stellar Evolution Code
• Gaia Data Release 3: Summary of the content and survey properties
• Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• The Assembly of the First Massive Black Holes
• First Light for GRAVITY: Phase Referencing Optical Interferometry for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer
• A catalogue of masses, structural parameters and velocity dispersion profiles of 112 Milky Way globular clusters
• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole
• An Update on Monitoring Stellar Orbits in the Galactic Center
• The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XII. Photometric Binaries along the Main-Sequence
• Origin of the system of globular clusters in the Milky Way
• NIRCam Performance on JWST In Flight
• Accurate distances to Galactic globular clusters through a combination of Gaia EDR3, HST and literature data
• Universal bolometric corrections for AGN over 7 luminosity decades
• The dynamical distance and intrinsic structure of the globular cluster omega Centauri
• An Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Globular Cluster G1: Improved Significance from New Keck and Hubble Space Telescope Observations
• Accelerating NBODY6 with Graphics Processing Units
• Gemini and Hubble Space Telescope Evidence for an Intermediate Mass Black Hole in omega Centauri
• New Limits on an Intermediate Mass Black Hole in Omega Centauri: I. Hubble Space Telescope Photometry and Proper Motions
• New Limits on an Intermediate Mass Black Hole in Omega Centauri: II. Dynamical Models
• A 20 Thousand Solar Mass Black Hole in the Stellar Cluster G1
• A stellar census in globular clusters with MUSE: The contribution of rotation to cluster dynamics studied with 200 000 stars
• The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope II. Multi-object spectroscopy (MOS)
• N-body modeling of globular clusters: Masses, mass-to-light ratios and intermediate-mass black holes
• Using the Fundamental Plane of Black Hole Activity to Distinguish X-ray Processes from Weakly Accreting Black Holes
• The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope III. Integral-field spectroscopy
• Hubble Space Telescope Proper Motion (HSTPROMO) Catalogs of Galactic Globular Clusters. I. Sample Selection, Data Reduction and NGC 7078 Results
• Hubble Space Telescope proper motion (HSTPROMO) catalogs of Galactic globular clusters. II. Kinematic profiles and maps
• The State-of-the-Art HST Astro-Photometric Analysis of the core of $\omega$ Centauri. I. The Catalog
• VLT Kinematics for omega Centauri: Further Support for a Central Black Hole
• The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. X. New Determinations of Centers for 65 Clusters
• The Parallax of Omega Centauri Measured from Gaia EDR3 and a Direct, Geometric Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch and the Hubble Constant
• The HST large programme on $\omega$ Centauri - II. internal kinematics
• The MAVERIC Survey: Still No Evidence for Accreting Intermediate-mass Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XXIII. Proper-motion catalogs and internal kinematics
• The effect of stellar-mass black holes on the central kinematics of omega Cen: a cautionary tale for IMBH interpretations
• Hubble Space Telescope Proper motion (HSTPROMO) Catalogs of Galactic Globular Clusters. VI. Improved data reduction and internal-kinematic analysis of NGC 362
• The Accreted Nuclear Clusters of the Milky Way
• No evidence for intermediate-mass black holes in the globular clusters $\omega$ Cen and NGC 6624
• The Flux Distribution of Sgr A*
• Evidence for a bottom-light initial mass function in massive star clusters
• Radial anisotropy in omega Cen limiting the room for an intermediate-mass black hole
• A Dynamical N-body Model for the Central Region of $\omega$ Centauri
• Detection of a $\sim$100,000 M${}_{\odot }$ black hole in M31's most massive globular cluster: A tidally stripped nucleus
• Stellar Escape from Globular Clusters. I. Escape Mechanisms and Properties at Ejection
• A Deep Chandra X-ray Limit on the Putative IMBH in Omega Centauri
• oMEGACat I: MUSE spectroscopy of 300,000 stars within the half-light radius of $\omega$ Centauri
• Dynamical modelling of globular clusters: challenges for the robust determination of IMBH candidates
• Compact jets dominate the continuum emission in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei
• oMEGACat II -- Photometry and proper motions for 1.4 million stars in Omega Centauri and its rotation in the plane of the sky
• Runaway and Hypervelocity Stars from Compact Object Encounters in Globular Clusters
• Gaia Focused Product Release: Sources from Service Interface Function image analysis -- Half a million new sources in omega Centauri
• MICADO: The Multi-Adaptive Optics Camera for Deep Observations

Cited by in corpus (32)

• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• oMEGACat II -- Photometry and proper motions for 1.4 million stars in Omega Centauri and its rotation in the plane of the sky
• Probing general relativistic spin-orbit coupling with gravitational waves from hierarchical triple systems
• New constraints on the central mass contents of Omega Centauri from combined stellar kinematics and pulsar timing
• oMEGACat. VI. Analysis of the overall kinematics of Omega Centauri in 3D: velocity dispersion, kinematic distance, anisotropy, and energy equipartition
• Demographics of Tidal Disruption Events with L-Galaxies: I. Volumetric TDE rates and the abundance of Nuclear Star Clusters
• Evolution of a black hole cluster in full general relativity
• Accretion onto supermassive and intermediate mass black holes in cosmological simulations
• Early formation of supermassive black holes from the collapse of strongly self-interacting dark matter
• Diverse dark matter profiles in FIRE dwarfs: black holes, cosmic rays and the cusp-core enigma
• Primordial black-hole formation and heavy r-process element synthesis from the cosmological QCD transition. Two aspects of an inhomogeneous early Universe
• Shadows of the Colossus: Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in a 10-million-body Globular Cluster Simulation
• Black Hole Scaling Relations in the Dwarf-galaxy Regime with $Gaia$-Sausage/Enceladus and $\omega$Centauri
• Investigating cosmic strings using large-volume hydrodynamical simulations in the context of JWST's massive UV-bright galaxies
• GravSphere2: A higher-order Jeans method for mass-modeling spherical stellar systems
• Dating N loud AGNs at high redshift: GS3073 as a snapshot of wCen like evolution of a nuclear star cluster
• The emergence of globular clusters and globular-cluster-like dwarfs
• Direct N-body simulations of NGC 6397 and its tidal tails
• Kinematics of metallicity populations in Omega Centauri using Gaia Focused Product Release and Hubble Space Telescope
• Probing populations of dark stellar remnants in the globular clusters 47 Tuc and Terzan 5 using pulsar timing
• Feedback from intermediate mass black holes on dwarf galaxy morphology at z=2
• Searching for new Hypervelocity Stars with Gaia DR3 and VLT/FORS2 Spectroscopy
• Detecting Intermediate-Mass Black Holes out to 20 Mpc with ELT/HARMONI: The Case of FCC 119
• Compact stellar systems hosting an intermediate mass black hole: magnetohydrodynamic study of inflow-outflow dynamics
• Minimum gas mass accreted by spinning intermediate-mass black holes in stellar clusters
• Variability as a new discovery channel for Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in the Time Domain Era
• FROST-CLUSTERS -- III. Metallicity-dependent intermediate mass black hole formation by runaway collisions in dense star clusters
• Boson Cloud Atlas: Direct mass measurements of superradiance clouds near black holes
• Asymmetrical thermonuclear supernovae triggered by the tidal disruption of white dwarfs
• Trails of clouds in binary black holes
• Mass and Spin Growth of Very Massive Stars in Star Clusters Potentially Associated with Little Red Dots
• Intermediate-mass black holes and contribution to extragalactic background light from Population III stars in Milky Way-like galaxies