Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics: publications

The coordinated radio and infrared survey for high-mass star formation – V. The CORNISH-South survey and catalogue

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 520:1 (2023) 1073-1091

Authors:

T Irabor, MG Hoare, M Burton, WD Cotton, P Diamond, S Dougherty, SP Ellingsen, R Fender, GA Fuller, S Garrington, PF Goldsmith, J Green, AG Gunn, J Jackson, S Kurtz, SL Lumsden, J Marti, I McDonald, S Molinari, TJ Moore, M Mutale, T Muxlow, T O’Brien, RD Oudmaijer, R Paladini, JD Pandian, JM Paredes, AMS Richards, A Sanchez-Monge, R Spencer, MA Thompson, G Umana, JS Urquhart, M Wieringa, A Zijlstra

Black hole discs and spheres in galactic nuclei – exploring the landscape of vector resonant relaxation equilibria

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 520:2 (2023) 2204-2216

Authors:

Gergely Máthé, Ákos Szölgyén, Bence Kocsis

Abstract:

ABSTRACT Vector resonant relaxation (VRR) is known to be the fastest gravitational process that shapes the geometry of stellar orbits in nuclear star clusters. This leads to the realignment of the orbital planes on the corresponding VRR time-scale tVRR of a few million years, while the eccentricity e and semimajor axis a of the individual orbits are approximately conserved. The distribution of orbital inclinations reaches an internal equilibrium characterized by two conserved quantities, the total potential energy among stellar orbits, Etot, and the total angular momentum, Ltot. On time-scales longer than tVRR, the eccentricities and semimajor axes change slowly, and the distribution of orbital inclinations are expected to evolve through a series of VRR equilibria. Using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain method, we determine the equilibrium distribution of orbital inclinations in the microcanonical ensemble with fixed Etot and Ltot for isolated nuclear star clusters with a power-law distribution of a, e, and m, where m is the stellar mass. We explore the possible equilibria for nine representative Etot–Ltot pairs that cover the possible parameter space. For all cases, the equilibria show anisotropic mass segregation, where the distribution of more massive objects is more flattened than that for lighter objects. Given that stellar black holes are more massive than the average main-sequence stars, these findings suggest that black holes reside in disc-like structures within nuclear star clusters for a wide range of initial conditions.

The optical light curve of GRB 221009A: the afterglow and the emerging supernova

(2023)

Authors:

MD Fulton, SJ Smartt, L Rhodes, ME Huber, AV Villar, T Moore, S Srivastav, ASB Schultz, KC Chambers, L Izzo, J Hjorth, T-W Chen, M Nicholl, RJ Foley, A Rest, KW Smith, DR Young, SA Sim, J Bright, Y Zenati, T de Boer, J Bulger, J Fairlamb, H Gao, C-C Lin, T Lowe, EA Magnier, IA Smith, R Wainscoat, DA Coulter, DO Jones, CD Kilpatrick, P McGill, E Ramirez-Ruiz, K-S Lee, G Narayan, V Ramakrishnan, R Ridden-Harper, A Singh, Q Wang, AKH Kong, C-C Ngeow, Y-C Pan, S Yang, KW Davis, AL Piro, C Rojas-Bravo, J Sommer, SK Yadavalli

Tidal disruption events from eccentric orbits and lessons learned from the noteworthy ASASSN-14ko

(2023)

Authors:

Chang Liu, Brenna Mockler, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Ricardo Yarza, Jamie AP Law-Smith, Smadar Naoz, Denyz Melchor, Sanaea Rose

A linear magnetic reconnection based plasma thruster for spacecraft propulsion

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) (2023)

Authors:

Christopher N Everett, Charles N Ryan

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