Hypervelocity Collisions of Binary Stars at the Galactic Centre

Idan Ginsburg, Abraham Loeb

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., MS 51, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

Paper: MNRAS, September 2006

EPrint Server: astro-ph/0609440


Abstract:

Recent surveys have identified seven hypervelocity stars (HVSs) in the halo of the Milky Way. Most of these stars may have originated from the breakup of binary star systems by the nuclear black hole SgrA*. In some instances, the breakup of the binary may lead to a collision between its member stars. We examine the dynamical properties of these collisions by simulating thousands of different binary orbits around SgrA* with a direct N-body integration code. For some orbital parameters, the two stars collide with an impact velocity lower than their escape velocity and may therefore coalesce. Some of the massive S-stars near Sgr A* might be the merger remnants of binary systems.


Preprints available from the authors at iginsbur@cfa.harvard.edu , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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