Friday 26th: "Explaining the orbits of the S-stars at the Galactic center"

Abstract by Fabio Antonini
My talk will focus on the origin of the S-stars, the young stars near the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the Galactic center. We apply recent insights about how relativity interacts with Newtonian (star-star) perturbations near Schwarzschild and Kerr SBHs to the S-stars and put constraints on competing models for their origin and stellar cusp parameters. For the first time we show that the orbital distribution of the S-stars predicted by formation scenarios which invoke the tidal disruption of binary stars by the SBH are consistent with observations. However, I will also show that the S-star orbits can only be reproduced by assuming dynamically relaxed models (i.e., steep density cusps) for the Galactic center. I will conclude by discussing the importance of resonant relaxation in terms of tidal disruption events in galactic nuclei.