We have carried out photometry and spectroscopy on a sample of 10 cD galaxies. The photometry shows, in general, fairly flat and red profile colours, implying an envelope with the same stellar population as the central galaxy. This may indicate a possible primordial origin for both structures, consistent with ideas of downsizing. Preliminary spectroscopic results are generally in agreement with the photometry, with for example younger populations at large radii for A2199, but A2589 has only younger populations.

Evolutionary population synthesis (EPS) models play an important role in many studies on the formation and evolution of galaxy. The poorly calibration for some stellar evolution stages in EPS models can lead to uncertainty of the parameter determinations for galaxies. By means of the HyperZ code and a set of theoretical galaxy template, which are built on the EPS models with and without binary interactions, we present photometric redshift (photo-z) estimates for passive galaxy sample at redshift z ~ 2.0. The passive galaxy sample is selected from Fang et al., and they also provide the redshift for these passive galaxies. By comparing the photo-z determined from EPS models with and without binary interactions, we find that the binary interactions have little effect in the photo-z determinations.

I review the evolution of binary supermassive black holes and focus on the stellar-dynamical mechanisms that may help to overcome the final-parsec problem – the possible stalling of the binary at a separation much larger than is required for an efficient gravitational wave emission. Recent N-body simulations have suggested that a departure from spherical symmetry in the nucleus of the galaxy may keep the rate of interaction of stars with the binary at a high enough level so that the binary continues to shrink rather rapidly. However, a major problem of all these simulations is that they do not probe the regime where collisionless effects are dominant – in other words, the number of particles in the simulation is still not sufficient to reach the asymptotic behavior of the system. I present a novel Monte Carlo method for simulating both collisional and collisionless evolution of non-spherical stellar systems, and apply it for the problem of binary supermassive black hole evolution. I show that in triaxial galaxies the final-parsec problem is largely non-existent, while in the axisymmetric case it seems to still exist in the limit of purely collisionless regime relevant for real galaxies, but disappears in the N-body simulations where the feasible values of N are still too low to get rid of collisional effects.

Triple supermassive black holes (SMBH) can form during the hierarchical mergers of massive galaxies with an existing binary. Perturbations by a third black hole may accelerate the merging process of an inner binary, for example through the Kozai mechanism. We analyze the evolution of simulated hierarchical triple SMBHs in galactic centers, and find resonances in the evolution of the semi-major axis, the eccentricity and the inclination, for both the inner and the outer orbits of the triple system, which are not only Kozai like. Through resonant oscillations, SMBH can trigger a significant increase of the inner SMBH binary eccentricity shortening the merger timescale expected from gravitational wave (GW) emission. As hierarchical triple SMBHs may be frequent in massive galaxies, the influence of orbital resonances is of great importance to our understanding of black hole coalescence and gravitational wave detection. Although Kozai mechanism is believed to play an important role in this process, detailed studies on the pattern of these resonances is necessary.

We present a set of, large scale direct N-body simulations of the galaxy collision with the central Supermassive Black Hole Binary (SMBHB) system. Based on our simulations which include the accurate Post Newtonian (PN) relativistic dynamical corrections we can estimated the merging time for the real astrophysical object. Each galaxy initially was represented as a set of particles (up to N=500k) with Plummer distribution. The SMBHBs system is described using the two special high mass, i.e. “relativistic”, particles. The interaction between these two particles have an extra PN correction terms (up to 3.5PN). Merging time upper limit was obtained for the closely interacting galaxy system NGC 6240.

Tidal Disruption (TD) of stars by supermassive central black holes from dense rotating star clusters is modeled by high-accuracy direct N-body simulation. We study the time evolution of the stellar tidal disruption rate and the origin of tidally disrupted stars. Compared with that in spherical systems, we found a higher TD rate in axisymmetric systems. The enhancement can be explained by an enlarged loss-cone in phase space which is raised from the fact that total angular momentum J is not conserved. As in the case of spherical systems, the distribution of the last apocenter distance of tidally accreted stars peaks at the classical critical radius. However, the angular distribution of the origin of the accreted stars reveals bimodal features. We show that the bimodal structure can be explained by the presence of two families of regular orbits, namely short axis tube and saucer orbits.

There is a supermassive black hole, a gaseous accretion disk and compact star cluster in the center of active galactic nuclei, as known today. So the activity of AGN can be represented as the result of interaction of these three subsystems. In this work we investigate the dynamical interaction of a central star cluster surrounding a supermassive black hole and a central accretion disk. The dissipative force acting on stars in the disk leads to an asymmetry in the phase space distribution of the central star cluster due to the rotating accretion disk. In our work we present some results of Stardisk model, where we see some changes in density and phase space of central star cluster due to influence of rotating gaseous accretion disk.

Almost all galaxies along the Hubble sequence host a compact massive object (CMO) in their center. The CMO can be either a supermassive black hole (SMBH) or a very dense stellar cluster, also known as nuclear star cluster (NSC). Generally, heavier galaxies (mass ≳ 1011 M⊙) host a central SMBH while lighter show a central NSC. Intermediate mass hosts, instead, contain both a NSC and a SMBH. One possible formation mechanisms of a NSC relies on the dry-merger (migratory) scenario, in which globular clusters (GCs) decay toward the center of the host galaxy and merge. In this framework, the absence of NSCs in high-mass galaxies can be imputed to destruction of the infalling GCs by the intense tidal field of the central SMBH. In this work, we report preliminary results of N-body simulations performed using our high-resolution, direct, code HiGPUs, to investigate the effects of a central SMBH on a single GC orbiting around it. By varying either the mass of the SMBH and the mass of the host galaxy, we derived an upper limit to the mass of the central SMBH, and thus to the mass of the host, above which the formation of a NSC is suppressed.

Nuclear stellar clusters (NSCs) are dense stellar systems known to exist at the center of most of the galaxies. Some of them host a central massive black hole (MBH). They are though to form through in-situ star formation following the infall of gas to the galactic center and/or because of the infall and merger of several stellar clusters. Here we explore the latter scenario by means of detailed self-consistent N-body simulations, proving that a NSC built by the infall and following merger of stellar clusters shows many of the observed features of the Milky Way NSC. We also explore the possibility that the infalling clusters host intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs). Once decayed to the center, the IMBHs act as massive-perturbers accelerating the relaxation of the NSC, filling the loss-cone and boosting the tidal disruption rate of stars up to a value larger than the observational estimates, therefore providing a cumulative constraint on the existence of IMBHs in NSCs. Studying how the properties of the infalling clusters map to the properties of the resulting NSC, we find that, in the IMBHs-free case, the infall mechanism is able to produce many different observational signatures in the form of age segregation.

Recent observations have revealed various structures within the gravitational influence of Sgr A* – the massive black hole in the Galactic center. These structures apparently defy the fundamental principles of star formation and stellar dynamics. On one hand, the red giants display a flat density profile, contrary to the cuspy one predicted by conventional stellar relaxation. On the other, Wolf-Rayet and OB stars are observed where in-situ star formation should have been prohibited by the strong tidal force from Sgr A*, and their spatial and phase-space distributions also contradict our understanding of stellar dynamics. To explain each of these inconsistencies, many scenarios have been proposed, which render the model increasingly complicated. Here, we suggest that the sub-parsec stellar disk surrounding Sgr A*, which was recently discovered, can reconcile all the above inconsistencies. We show that during the fragmenting past of this disk, the star-forming clumps could efficiently deplete red giants by repeatedly colliding with them. We also show that because of the torque exerted by the disk, stars within the central arcsec from Sgr A* would quickly mix in the angular-momentum space, which naturally explains the observed distributions of Wolf-Rayet and OB stars. Our results imply that Sgr A* was fueled by gas and stars several millions years ago and could have been an energetic AGN. We discuss future observations that can further testify our model.

We have used the Wide Field Spectrograph on the Australian National University 2.3-m telescope to perform the integral field spectroscopy for a sample of the Galactic planetary nebulae. The spatially resolved velocity distributions of the Hα emission line were used to determine the kinematic features and nebular orientations. Our findings show that some bulge planetary nebulae toward the Galactic center have a particular orientation.

We discuss the interplay of gravity and radiation in a static, spherically symmetric spacetime. Because of the spacetime curvature, balance between radiation pressure from spherical star and effective force of gravity may be established in a particular distance from the star surface, on so-called Eddington capture sphere. This is in contrast with the Newtonian scenario, for which Eddington luminosity of the radiation assures gravity-radiation balance at any radius. We explore properties of this relativistic equilibrium and the dynamics of test particles under radiation influence in the strong gravity regime.

The shadow of a Kerr-like black hole has been considered and it was shown that in addition to the specific angular momentum a, deformation parameter of Kerr-like space-time essentially deforms the shape of the black hole shadow. For a given value of the black hole spin parameter a, the presence of a deformation parameter ε reduces the shadow and enlarges its deformation with respect to the one in the Kerr space-time.

By performing three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations, we show that the Fermi bubbles could be inflated by winds launched from the “past” hot accretion flow in Sgr A*. The parameters of the accretion flow required in the model are consistent with those obtained independently from other observational constraints. The wind parameters are taken from small scale MHD numerical simulations of hot accretion flows.

Significant progresses have been made since the discovery of hot accretion flow, a theory successfully applied to the low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) and black hole (BH) X-ray binaries (BHBs) in their hard states. Motivated by these updates, we re-investigate the radiative efficiency of hot accretion flow. We find that, the brightest regime of hot accretion flow shows a distinctive property, i.e. it has a constant efficiency independent of accretion rates, similar to the standard thin disk. For less bright regime, the efficiency has a steep positive correlation with the accretion rate, while for faint regime typical of advection-dominated accretion flow, the correlation is shadower. This result can naturally explain the observed two distinctive correlations between radio and X-ray luminosities in black hole X-ray binaries. The key difference in systems with distinctive correlations could be the viscous parameter, which determines the critical luminosity of different accretion modes.

We numerically investigate the thermally unstable accretion discs around spinning black holes with different spins. We adopted an additional evolutionary viscosity equation to replace the standard alpha-prescription based on the results of two MHD simulations. We find an interesting oscillation when accretion switches to slim disc mode. The oscillation arises from the sonic point of accretion flow and propagates outwards. We mimic the bolometric light-curve and find a series of harmonics on its power spectrum. The frequency ratio of those harmonics is a regular integer series. The lowest frequency of the harmonics is identical to the prediction of trapped p-mode in QPO theory.

We present the estimates of the black hole spins of five quasars. The peaks of the spectra of the accretion discs surrounding massive black holes in quasars are in the far-UV or soft X-ray band, which are usually not observed. However, in the disc corona model, the soft photons from the disc are Comptonized to high energy in the hot corona, and the hard X-ray spectra (luminosity and spectral shape) contain the information of the incident spectra from the disc. The values of black hole spin parameter a are inferred from the spectral fitting, which spread over a large range, ~ −0.94 to 0.998.

We summarise the recent progress in understanding the formation and evolution of globular clusters (GCs) in the context of galaxy formation and evolution. It is discussed that an end-to-end model for GC formation and evolution should capture four different phases: (1) star and cluster formation in the high-pressure interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies, (2) cluster disruption by tidal shocks in the gas-rich host galaxy disc, (3) cluster migration into the galaxy halo, and (4) the final evaporation-dominated evolution of GCs until the present day. Previous models have mainly focussed on phase 4. We present and discuss a simple model that includes each of these four steps – its key difference with respect to previous work is the simultaneous addition of the high-redshift formation and early evolution of young GCs, as well as their migration into galaxy haloes. The new model provides an excellent match to the observed GC mass spectrum and specific frequency, as well as the relations of GCs to the host dark matter halo mass and supermassive black hole mass. These results show (1) that the properties of present-day GCs are reproduced by assuming that they are the natural outcome of regular high-redshift star formation (i.e. they form according to same physical processes that govern massive cluster formation in the local Universe), and (2) that models only including GC evaporation strongly underestimate their integrated mass loss over a Hubble time.

We aim to investigate the formation of sub-galactic structure in the Lambda cold dark matter (CDM) cosmology. To accomplish our research goal, we have added various baryonic physics on the existing cosmological hydrodynamic code, GADGET-2. We performed two test runs to check our new implementations. We show our preliminary results from these test runs.

Only twelve of the > 76 Local Group galaxies contain globular clusters, showing a broad range of specific frequencies. Here we summarize the properties of these globular cluster systems. Many host galaxies contain very old globulars, but in some globular cluster formation may have been delayed. An age range of several Gyr is common. Except for the inner regions of the spirals, old globular clusters tend to be metal-poor. Increasingly, light element variations and hints of multiple stellar populations are being found also in extragalactic globulars. There is ample evidence for globular cluster accretion from dwarfs onto massive galaxies, but its magnitude has yet to be quantified. Caution is needed to avoid overinterpreting indirect evidence.