Intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters

Abstract

The mass of central bodies in a number of Milky-Way globular clusters is estimated based on the stellar radial-velocity dispersion data. It is assumed that stars located close to the center of the cluster (i.e., to the black hole) rotate about it, have masses on the order of the solar mass, and that the mass of the gravitating center is greater by a factor of 1000. The radial velocities of stars in the vicinity of cluster centers are analyzed for two hypothetical extreme cases: (1) ordered orbital motion of stars about the gravitating center and (2) chaotic orbital motions. The masses inferred for most of the clusters (102–104M⊙) correspond to intermediate-mass black holes. Another important result of this study consists in the determination of the quantity l, the characteristic scale length of the additional spatial dimension. Given the age and mass of the globular cluster NGC 6397 we estimate l to be between 0.02 and 0.14 mm.