Forming young and hypervelocity stars in the Galactic Centre via tidal disruption of a molecular cloud

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Milky Way Galaxy hosts a four million solar mass black hole, Sgr A*, that underwent a major accretion episode approximately 3–6 Myr ago. During the episode, hundreds of young massive stars formed in a disc orbiting Sgr A* in the central half parsec. The recent discovery of a hypervelocity star (HVS) S5-HVS1, ejected by Sgr A* five Myr ago with a velocity vector consistent with the disc, suggests that this event also produced binary star disruptions. The initial stellar disc has to be rather eccentric for this to occur. Such eccentric discs can form from the tidal disruptions of molecular clouds. Here, we perform simulations of such disruptions, focusing on gas clouds on rather radial initial orbits. As a result, stars formed in our simulations are on very eccentric orbits ($\bar{e}\sim 0.6$) with a lopsided configuration. For some clouds, counterrotating stars are formed. As in previous work, we find that such discs undergo a secular gravitational instability that leads to a moderate number of particles obtaining eccentricities of 0.99 or greater, sufficient for stellar binary disruption. We also reproduce the mean eccentricity of the young disc in the Galactic Centre, though not the observed surface density profile. We discuss missing physics and observational biases that may explain this discrepancy. We conclude that observed S-stars, HVSs, and disc stars tightly constrain the initial cloud parameters, indicating a cloud mass between a few × 104 and $10^5\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$, and a velocity between ∼40 and 80 km s−1 at 10 pc.