Ricerc@Sapienza

Massive and Super Massive black holes (M & SMBHs) are a scaled version of each other: the former have stellar origin thus their mass is in the range 10-100 solar masses (Ms) and evolve in stellar clusters, the latter, whose origin and mechanism of formation is still under debate, are 4-5 order of magnitude more massive than BHs and lie in the innermost region of galaxies with which they co-evolve. Both M & SMBHs influence the dynamical evolution of the environment in which they live. Massive BHs which evolve in star clusters, either Globular and Open clusters (GCs & OCs), may form binary systems which may merge, because of gravitational interactions with field stars, and release gravitational waves (GW). In addition black hole binary systems play a crucial role in the evolution of star clusters acting as energy sources which are likely to prevent clusters from core collapse (CC).
On the other hand, thanks to the high resolution images provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is clear that the nuclei of the majority of elliptical and early-type spiral galaxies (>10^10Ms) harbor SMBHs, whose mass is between 10^6Ms and 10^9Ms. In many cases, the central SMBH is surrounded by a massive, very compact, star cluster which is commonly referred to as Nuclear Stellar Cluster (NSC), with structural properties that are reminiscent of globular clusters (GCs).
The project proposed here deals with these topics: the first part is devoted to the study of the dynamical evolution of massive black holes binary systems in low density stellar clusters in order to constrain the probability that such systems may merge in a Hubble time. The second part regards the study of the secular evolution of NSCs, with a particular focusing on the Milky Way (MW) NSC and its dynamical interaction with the central SMBH.