Theoretical astrophysics and plasma physics at RPC

Abstract:

We review the available methods for estimating actions, angles and frequencies of orbits in both axisymmetric and triaxial potentials. The methods are separated into two classes. Unless an orbit has been trapped by a resonance, convergent, or iterative, methods are able to recover the actions to arbitrarily high accuracy given sufficient computing time. Faster non-convergent methods rely on the potential being sufficiently close to a separable potential, and the accuracy of the action estimate cannot be improved through further computation. We critically compare the accuracy of the methods and the required computation time for a range of orbits in an axisymmetric multicomponent Galactic potential. We introduce a new method for estimating actions that builds on the adiabatic approximation of Schönrich and Binney and discuss the accuracy required for the actions, angles and frequencies using suitable distribution functions for the thin and thick discs, the stellar halo and a star stream. We conclude that for studies of the disc and smooth halo component of the Milky Way, the most suitable compromise between speed and accuracy is the Stäckel Fudge, whilst when studying streams the non-convergent methods do not offer sufficient accuracy and the most suitable method is computing the actions from an orbit integration via a generating function. All the software used in this study can be downloaded from https://github.com/jls713/tact.

Abstract:

We present our mass estimate of the central black hole in the isolated spiral galaxy NGC 4414. Using natural guide star adaptive optics assisted observations with the Gemini Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS) and the natural seeing Gemini MultiObject Spectrographs-North (GMOS), we derived two-dimensional stellar kinematic maps of NGC 4414 covering the central 1.5 arcsec and 10 arcsec, respectively, at a NIFS spatial resolution of 0.13 arcsec. The kinematic maps reveal a regular rotation pattern and a central velocity dispersion dip down to around 105 km/s. We constructed dynamical models using two different methods: Jeans anisotropic dynamical modeling and axisymmetric Schwarzschild modeling. Both modeling methods give consistent results, but we cannot constrain the lower mass limit and only measure an upper limit for the black hole mass of MBH = 1.56 × 106 M (at 3σ level) which is at least 1σ below the recent MBH − σe relations. Further tests with dark matter, mass-to-light ratio variation and different light models confirm that our results are not dominated by uncertainties. The derived upper mass limit is not only below the MBH − σe relation, but is also five times lower than the lower limit black hole mass anticipated from the resolution limit of the sphere of influence. This proves that via high quality integral field data we are now able to push black hole measurements down to at least five times less than the resolution limit.