New Probes of the Galactic Black Hole and its Environs

这个项目是加州大学洛杉矶分校团队对银河系中心区域高度可见性研究的继续，其中包括最近的超大质量黑洞(SMBH)。有了特殊的仪器，他们能够跟踪靠近我们银河系中心SMBH轨道的单个恒星的运动。预计2014年和2018年都会发生的罕见天体物理事件将被观测到，这可能会提供一种关于SMBH周围引力的间接研究。我们银河系的中心区域为理解SMBH是如何形成的以及为什么它们在星系核中如此常见提供了一个独特的实验室，它也提供了一个实验室来测试我们关于引力的基本概念。提倡者将在他们现有的记录和与教育和公共宣传实体的关系的基础上，通过为本科生教科书和课程材料创建公开可用的材料和博物馆展品，参与纪录片，并进行公开演讲、天文馆表演和小学课堂演示，向公众传播他们的工作。这一群体还将继续直接培训和指导本科生和研究生，特别强调从代表性不足的群体中招收学生。该团队将在凯克自适应光学系统上使用升级后的激光以及OSIRIS中的新光栅来：(1)通过捕捉G2-假设的气体云-在银河系SMBH经过其最近的接近时预期与其相遇来研究黑洞吸积物理；(2)在2018年以足够的精度捕捉到S0-2最近的接近，以足够的精度测试在未探索的区域(距离黑洞100倍，质量尺度比之前的任何测试大40万倍)的广义相对论预测，并以优于1%的精度测量到银河中心的距离；(3)绘制了核星团的恒星形成和动力学历史的全貌。

This project is a continuation of the UCLA team's highly-visible study of the central regions of our Galaxy, which includes the nearest supermassive black hole (SMBH). With special instrumentation, they are able to follow the motions of individual stars orbiting close to the SMBH in the center of our galaxy. Rare astrophysical events predicted to occur in both 2014 and 2018 will be observed, perhaps offering an indirect study of gravity around the SMBH. The central region of our galaxy provides a unique laboratory for understanding how SMBHs are formed and why they are so common in galactic nuclei, and it provides a laboratory to test our fundamental notions of gravity. The proposers will build on their existing track-record and relationships with education and public outreach entities to disseminate their work to the general public, by creating publicly-available material for undergraduate textbooks and course material, and museum exhibits, participating in documentaries, and giving public talks, planetarium shows, and elementary-school classroom presentations. This group will also continue to directly train and mentor undergraduate and graduate students, with a special emphasis placed on recruiting students from underrepresented groups. The team will use the upgraded laser on the Keck Adaptive Optics system as well as the new grating in OSIRIS to: (1) Investigate black hole accretion physics by capturing the anticipated encounter of G2 - a putative gas cloud - with the Galaxy's SMBH as it goes through its closest approach; (2) Capture the closest approach of S0-2 in 2018 with sufficient precision to test predictions of General Relativity in an unexplored regime (100 times closer to a black hole and on a mass scale that is 400,000 times larger than any previous test) and to measure the distance to the Galactic Center with better than 1% precision; (3) Construct a comprehensive picture of the star formation and dynamical history of the nuclear star cluster.