Motion of a Central Massive Object in a Stellar Disk Excited by One‐armed Pseudoinstability

Abstract

We carried out a set of N-body simulations of a two-dimensional stellar disk with a central massive object, which is assumed to be a supermassive black hole. We found that the central object moves because of the one-armed pseudoinstability of the disk induced by the central massive object. The perturbation produced by the motion of the massive object is considered to have significant influence on the dynamics of galactic nuclei, which can result in triggering activities such as quasars and active galactic nuclei. The motion of the massive object may also lead to the growth of supermassive black holes and the evolution of the structure of galactic nuclei.