The Formation of the Milky Way Nuclear Cluster

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation of the Milky Way's Nuclear Star Cluster through N-body simulations, supporting the hypothesis that globular cluster decay and merging can produce observed cluster features.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed N-body simulation study demonstrating how globular cluster decay can form the Milky Way's Nuclear Star Cluster.

Findings

Simulations produce a cluster with observed features of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster.

Dynamical friction causes globular clusters to decay inward and merge.

The resulting cluster matches key observational properties.

Abstract

Nuclear Star Clusters are observed at the center of many galaxies. In particular in the center of the Milky Way the Nuclear Star Cluster coexists with a cen- tral supermassive black hole. The origin of these clusters is still unknown; a possible formation mechanism is the decay of massive globular clusters driven inward to the galactic center by dynamical friction and their subsequent merging. By investigating this scenario by means of sophisticated N-body simulations we found that this process could lead to a final product which actually shows many of the observed features of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster.