Resonant Relaxation near the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center

Abstract

The coherent torques between stars on orbits near massive black holes (MBHs) lead to resonant angular momentum relaxation. Due to the fact that orbits are Keplerian to good approximation, the torques efficiently change the magnitude of the angular momenta and rotate the orbital inclinations. As a result the stars are rapidly randomized. The galactic MBH is a good system for the observational study of resonant relaxation. The age of the young B-stars at a distance of ∼ 0.01 pc from the MBH is comparable to the resonant relaxation time, implying that resonant relaxation may have played an important role in their dynamical structure. In contrast, the O-stars in the stellar disks at ∼ 0.1 pc are younger than the resonant relaxation time, as required by their dynamical coherence. Resonant relaxation dynamics dominates the event rate of gravitational wave (GW) emission from inspiraling stars into MBHs of masses comparable to the Galactic MBH. Resonant relaxation leads to rates ≲ 10 times higher than those predicted by 2-body relaxation, which would improve the prospects of detecting these events by future GW detectors, such as LISA.