Variable accretion and emission from the stellar winds in the Galactic centre

Jorge Cuadra, Sergei Nayakshin, Fabrice Martins

Paper: MNRAS, submitted

Weblink: http://www.arxiv.org/ps/0705.0769


Abstract:

We present numerical simulations of stellar wind dynamics in the central parsec of the Galactic centre. We are particularly interested in accretion of gas on to Sgr A*, the super-massive black hole. Unlike our previous efforts, here we use the state of the art observational data on orbits and wind properties of individual wind-producing stars. Since wind velocities were revised upwards and non-zero eccentricities were considered, our new simulations show fewer clumps of cold gas and no conspicuous disc-like structure. The accretion flow circularisation radius is roughly unchaged, 5000 Schwarzschild radii. The accretion rate is dominated by a few close `slow wind stars' (v_w <= 750 km/sec ), and is consistent with the Bondi estimate, but variable on time-scales of tens to hundreds of years. This variability is due to the stochastic in-fall of cold clumps, as in earlier simulations, and to the eccentric orbits of stars. The present models fail to explain the higher luminosity of Sgr A* a few hundred years ago implied by Integral observations, but we argue that the accretion of a cold clump with a small impact parameter could have caused it. Finally, we show the possibility of constraining the total mass-loss rate of the `slow wind stars' using near infra-red observations of gas in the central few arcseconds.


Preprints available from the authors at jcuadra@cervantes.colorado.edu , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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