New Probes of the Galactic Black Hole and its Environs

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project is a continuation of the UCLA team's highly-visible study of the central regions of our Galaxy, which includes the nearest supermassive black hole (SMBH). With special instrumentation, they are able to follow the motions of individual stars orbiting close to the SMBH in the center of our galaxy. Rare astrophysical events predicted to occur in both 2014 and 2018 will be observed, perhaps offering an indirect study of gravity around the SMBH. The central region of our galaxy provides a unique laboratory for understanding how SMBHs are formed and why they are so common in galactic nuclei, and it provides a laboratory to test our fundamental notions of gravity. The proposers will build on their existing track-record and relationships with education and public outreach entities to disseminate their work to the general public, by creating publicly-available material for undergraduate textbooks and course material, and museum exhibits, participating in documentaries, and giving public talks, planetarium shows, and elementary-school classroom presentations. This group will also continue to directly train and mentor undergraduate and graduate students, with a special emphasis placed on recruiting students from underrepresented groups. The team will use the upgraded laser on the Keck Adaptive Optics system as well as the new grating in OSIRIS to: (1) Investigate black hole accretion physics by capturing the anticipated encounter of G2 - a putative gas cloud - with the Galaxy's SMBH as it goes through its closest approach; (2) Capture the closest approach of S0-2 in 2018 with sufficient precision to test predictions of General Relativity in an unexplored regime (100 times closer to a black hole and on a mass scale that is 400,000 times larger than any previous test) and to measure the distance to the Galactic Center with better than 1% precision; (3) Construct a comprehensive picture of the star formation and dynamical history of the nuclear star cluster.