The Fate of Binary Stars Hosting Planets upon Interaction with Sgr A* Black hole

TL;DR

This study investigates how binary star systems with planets interact with the supermassive black hole Sgr A*, revealing different capture and ejection probabilities for stars and planets through high-precision simulations.

Contribution

It extends previous work by including planetary systems in the analysis of binary star interactions with Sgr A* using advanced N-body simulations.

Findings

Approximately 49.4% of stars are captured by Sgr A*

About 14.5% of planets are captured after interaction

Ejection of hypervelocity planets occurs at roughly 21.7%

Abstract

Our Galaxy hosts a very massive object at its centre, often referred to as the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. Its gravitational tidal field is so intense that can strip apart a binary star passing its vicinity and accelerate one of the components of the binary as hypervelocity star (HVS) and grab the other star as S-star. Taken into consideration that many binary star systems are known to host planets, in this paper we aim to broaden the study of the close interaction of binary stars and their planetary systems with Sgr A* massive object. Results are obtained via a high precision $N-$body code including post-Newtonian approximation. We quantify the likelihood of capture and ejection of stars and planets after interaction with Sgr A*, finding that the fraction of stars captured around it is about three times that of the planets (~ 49.4% versus ~14.5%) and the fraction of hypervelocity planet (HVP) ejection is about twice HVSs (~21.7% versus ~9.0%). The actual possibility of observational counterparts deserves further investigation.