Stellar Dynamics at the Galactic Center with a Thirty Meter Telescope
Abstract
We discuss physical experiments achievable via the infrared monitoring of stellar dynamics in the neighborhood of the massive black hole at the Galactic center with a Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Given the likely observational capabilities of the TMT and what is currently known about the stellar environment at the Galactic Center, we synthesize plausible samples of stellar orbits around the black hole. We use the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method to evaluate the constraints that the monitoring of these orbits place on the matter content near the black hole. We find that if the extended matter distribution enclosed by the orbits at 0.01 pc has a mass greater than ~1000 Msun, it will produce measurable deviations from Keplerian motion. We also estimate the constraints that will be placed on the black hole's mass and on the distance to the Galactic Center, and find that both will be measured to better than ~0.1%. The lowest-order relativistic effects, such as the prograde precession, will be detectable with the TMT. Higher-order effects, including frame dragging due to black hole spin, requires better astrometric precision than currently envisioned, or the favorable discovery of a compact, highly eccentric orbit. Finally, we calculate the rate at which monitored stars experience detectable nearby encounters with background stars. The encounters probe the mass function of stellar remnants that accumulate near the black hole. We find that ~30 such encounters should be detected with the TMT over a ten year period.Keywords
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