Fulvio Melia, Heino Falcke
Published 2001-06-08Version 1
The inner few parsecs at the Galactic Center have come under intense scrutiny in recent years, in part due to the exciting broad-band observations of this region, but also because of the growing interest from theorists motivated to study the physics of black hole accretion, magnetized gas dynamics and unusual star formation. The Galactic Center is now known to contain arguably the most compelling supermassive black hole candidate, weighing in at a little over 2.6 million suns. Its interaction with the nearby environment, comprised of clusters of evolved and young stars, a molecular dusty ring, ionized gas streamers, diffuse hot gas, and a hypernova remnant, is providing a wealth of accretion phenomenology and high-energy processes for detailed modeling. In this review, we summarize the latest observational results, and focus on the physical interpretation of the most intriguing object in this region---the compact radio source Sgr A*, thought to be the radiative manifestation of the supermassive black hole.
Comments: Annual Review of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 39 (2001), in press, 48 pages, 20 figures (partially in reduced quality), also available at http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/hfalcke/publications.html#gcreview
Journal: Ann.Rev.Astron.Astrophys. 39 (2001) 309-352
Gamma-ray Emission From Advection-Dominated Accretion Flows Around Black Holes: Application to the Galactic Center
High Spectral and Spatial Resolution Observations of Shocked Molecular Hydrogen at the Galactic Center
A full sky prediction of the SZ effect from diffuse hot gas in the local universe and the upper limit from the WMAP data
