Tufts/CfA/MIT Cosmology Seminar, at the CfA:

Tuesday, February 22, 2005
2:30 pm
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden Street, Cambridge
Philips Auditorium

"A new model for quasars and the M-sigma relation"


Jordi Miralda-Escude
Ohio State University

Abstract:

A quasar model is presented in which the accretion disk around the black hole is constantly replenished by matter from stars near the nucleus of a galaxy, as the stars are captured by the accretion disk and are destroyed inside it. The model solves the problem of how the large mass of a black hole was carried to the very small nuclear region of a galaxy from which the quasar light is emitted, and implies a relation between the mass of the black hole and the central velocity dispersion of the stars that matches the observed M-sigma relation.

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