Radial Velocities of Stars in the Galactic Center

We present results from K band slit scan observations of a ~20''x20'' region of the Galactic center (GC) in two separate epochs more than five years apart. The high resolution (R>=14,000) observations allow the most accurate radial velocity and acceleration measurements of the stars in the central parsec of the Galaxy. Detected stars can be divided into three groups based on the CO absorption band heads at ~2.2935 microns and the He I lines at ~2.0581 microns and ~2.112, 2.113 microns: cool, narrow-line hot and broad-line hot. The radial velocities of the cool, late-type stars have approximately a symmetrical distribution with its center at ~-7.8(+/-10.3) km/s and a standard deviation ~113.7(+/-10.3) km/s. Although our statistics are dominated by the brightest stars, we estimate a central black hole mass of 3.9(+/-1.1) million solar masses, consistent with current estimates from complete orbits of individual stars. Our surface density profile and the velocity dispersion of the late type stars support the existence of a low density region at the Galactic center suggested by earlier observations. Many hot, early-type stars show radial velocity changes higher than maximum values allowed by pure circular orbital motions around a central massive object, suggesting that the motions of these stars greatly deviate from circular orbital motions around the Galactic center. The correlation between the radial velocities of the early type He I stars and their declination offsets from Sagittarius A* suggests that a systematic rotation is present for the early-type population. No figure rotation around the Galactic center for the late type stars is supported by the new observations.Comment: 61 pages, 18 figures, 7 tables; accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journa

Guidance, Flight Mechanics and Trajectory Optimization. Volume 5 - State Determination And/or Estimation

Guidance, flight mechanics, and trajectory optimizatio

The SAMI Galaxy Survey: gravitational potential and surface density drive stellar populations -- I. early-type galaxies

The well-established correlations between the mass of a galaxy and the properties of its stars are considered evidence for mass driving the evolution of the stellar population. However, for early-type galaxies (ETGs), we find that $g-i$ color and stellar metallicity [Z/H] correlate more strongly with gravitational potential $\Phi$ than with mass $M$, whereas stellar population age correlates best with surface density $\Sigma$. Specifically, for our sample of 625 ETGs with integral-field spectroscopy from the SAMI Galaxy Survey, compared to correlations with mass, the color--$\Phi$, [Z/H]--$\Phi$, and age--$\Sigma$ relations show both smaller scatter and less residual trend with galaxy size. For the star formation duration proxy [$\alpha$/Fe], we find comparable results for trends with $\Phi$ and $\Sigma$, with both being significantly stronger than the [$\alpha$/Fe]-$M$ relation. In determining the strength of a trend, we analyze both the overall scatter, and the observational uncertainty on the parameters, in order to compare the intrinsic scatter in each correlation. These results lead us to the following inferences and interpretations: (1) the color--$\Phi$ diagram is a more precise tool for determining the developmental stage of the stellar population than the conventional color--mass diagram; and (2) gravitational potential is the primary regulator of global stellar metallicity, via its relation to the gas escape velocity. Furthermore, we propose the following two mechanisms for the age and [$\alpha$/Fe] relations with $\Sigma$: (a) the age--$\Sigma$ and [$\alpha$/Fe]--$\Sigma$ correlations arise as results of compactness driven quenching mechanisms; and/or (b) as fossil records of the $\Sigma_{SFR}\propto\Sigma_{gas}$ relation in their disk-dominated progenitors.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table Accepted to Ap

Recovering Velocity Distributions via Penalized Likelihood

Line-of-sight velocity distributions are crucial for unravelling the dynamics of hot stellar systems. We present a new formalism based on penalized likelihood for deriving such distributions from kinematical data, and evaluate the performance of two algorithms that extract N(V) from absorption-line spectra and from sets of individual velocities. Both algorithms are superior to existing ones in that the solutions are nearly unbiased even when the data are so poor that a great deal of smoothing is required. In addition, the discrete-velocity algorithm is able to remove a known distribution of measurement errors from the estimate of N(V). The formalism is used to recover the velocity distribution of stars in five fields near the center of the globular cluster Omega Centauri.Comment: 18 LATEX pages, 10 Postscript figures, uses AASTEX, epsf.sty. Submitted to The Astronomical Journal, May 199

Comparison of an approximately isothermal gravitational potentials of elliptical galaxies based on X-ray and optical data

We analyze six X-ray bright elliptical galaxies, observed with Chandra and XMM-Newton, and approximate their gravitational potentials by isothermal spheres phi(r)=v_c^2 ln(r) over a range of radii from ~0.5 to ~25 kpc. We then compare the circular speed v_c derived from X-ray data with the estimators available from optical data. In particular we discuss two simple and robust procedures for evaluating the circular speed of the galaxy using the observed optical surface brightness and the line-of-sight velocity dispersion profiles. The best fitting relation between the circular speeds derived from optical observations of stars and X-ray observations of hot gas is v_{c,opt}~ \eta * v_{c,X}, where \eta=1.10-1.15 (depending on the method), suggesting, albeit with large statistical and systematic uncertainties, that non-thermal pressure on average contributes ~20-30% of the gas thermal pressure.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures; Accepted for publication in MNRA

The Structure and Dynamical Evolution of Dark Matter Halos

(Shortened) We use N-body simulations to investigate the structure and dynamical evolution of dark matter halos in galaxy clusters. Our sample consists of nine massive halos from an EdS universe with scale free power spectrum and n = -1. Halos are resolved by ~20000 particles each, with a dynamical resolution of 20-25 kpc. Large scale tidal fields are included up to L=150 Mpc using background particles. The halo formation process can be characterized by the alternation of two dynamical configurations: a merging phase and a relaxation phase, defined by their signature on the evolution of the total mass and rms velocity. Halos spend on average one 1/3 of their evolution in the merging phase and 2/3 in the relaxation phase. Using this definition, we study the density profiles and their change during the halo history. The average density profiles are fitted by the NFW analytical model with an rms residual of 17% between the virial radius Rv and 0.01 Rv. The Hernquist (1990) profiles fits the same halos with an rms residual of 26%. The trend with mass of the scale radius of these fits is marginally consistent with that found by Cole & Lacey (1996): in comparison our halos are more centrally concentrated, and the relation between scale radius and halo mass is slightly steeper. We find a moderately large scatter in this relation, due both to dynamical evolution within halos and to fluctuations in the halo population. We analyze the dynamical equilibrium of our halos using the Jeans' equation, and find that on average they are approximately in equilibrium within their virial radius. Finally, we find that the projected mass profiles of our simulated halos are in very good agreement with the profiles of three rich galaxy clusters derived from strong and weak gravitational lensing observations.Comment: 20 pages, Latex, with all figures included. Modified to match the published versio