Formation of Accretion Disks around Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Ultra Compact Dwarf Galaxies and Nuclear Stellar Clusters

Clicks: 14
ID: 327243
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #1,047 of 1,339 articles by views in monthly notices of the royal astronomical society

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,339 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract Recent observations have found many ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs) that contain massive black holes (MBHs) typically consisting of 10% − 15% of their total mass, with some as high as 40%. However, whether UCDs initially started with MBHs or grew from intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) is unclear. We propose a mechanism in which AGB stars have their gas ejected which forms an accretion disk around an IMBH to fuel BH growth. We used smooth particle hydrodynamical simulations to (i) model the creation and evolution of gas disks that can finally evolve into accretion disks and to investigate (ii) how the properties of the gas disk depend on the model. We find that the amount of mass in the disk increases more with UCD mass than with IMBH mass. For lower-mass IMBHs of 100M⊙, a majority of the gas mass present can be trapped in a disk, leading to the idea that lower-mass BHs can utilise the proposed mechanism. The main mechanism working against accretion disk formation is the creation of new stars within the disk, not just through the removal of gas but through gravitational disruption as well. Finally, an estimation of the total BH growth provides a list of observed UCDs which could have formed MBHs using the proposed mechanism which can be useful for verifying the proposed mechanism. Future simulations aimed at modelling the formation of such UCDs can be employed to provide a full picture of the results presented in this paper.
Reference Key
openalex_W7204439457 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Sebastian Darr, Kenji Bekki
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag1620
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1620
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.