Tidal Destruction of a Molecular Cloud by an Intermediate Mass Black Hole
The mass of the black hole at the center of our Galaxy is supposed to be four million times of solar mass. On the other hand, there are many observations of stellar-mass black holes whose masses are less than hundred solar mass. The standard mechanisms for creating the Galactic center black hole requires the population of many intermediate mass black holes, but no strong evidence for their existence was available in the past. Recently some radio observation found the cold molecular cloud with extremely large velocity dispersions, which was interpreted as the result of tidal deformation and acceleration by a hypothetical intermediate mass black hole. The present movie is the result of numerical simulation for this tidal destruction process by a black hole, which support the above interpretation of the radio observation. This line of theoretical research may contribute the detailed analyses of observations.
KEYWORDS: Black Hole / Molecular Cloud / Tidal Destruction
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