Using the motion of S2 to constrain vector clouds around Sgr A*

March 29, 2024

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title> <jats:p>The dark compact object at the centre of the Milky Way is well established to be a supermassive black hole with mass $M_{\bullet } \sim 4.3 \times 10^6 \, {\rm M}_{\odot }$, but the nature of its environment is still under debate. In this work, we used astrometric and spectroscopic measurements of the motion of the star S2, one of the closest stars to the massive black hole, to determine an upper limit on an extended mass composed of a massive vector field around Sagittarius A*. For a vector with effective mass $10^{-19} \lesssim m_\mathrm{ s} \lesssim 10^{-18} \, \rm eV$, our Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis shows no evidence for such a cloud, placing an upper bound $M_{\rm cloud} \lesssim 0.1 \% \, M_{\bullet }$ at 3σ confidence level. We show that dynamical friction exerted by the medium on S2 motion plays no role in the analysis performed in this and previous works, and can be neglected thus.</jats:p>

Authors in the community:

• 

  A

  Arianna Foschi

  ist428707

  Affiliations and sources

  IST > CENTRA

  Centro de Astrofísica e Gravitação

  IST

  Instituto Superior Técnico

  In: orcid

  ID: 156428782

AM - Accepted manuscript

Oxford University Press (OUP)

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/530/4/3740/7637797?login=true

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

3740

3751

530

4

0035-8711

10.1093/mnras/stae423

physical-sciences - Physical sciences

eng - English