The Thermodynamics of Rotating Black Hole Star Clusters

Rotating star clusters near supermassive black holes are studied using Touma–Tremaine thermodynamics of gravitationally interacting orbital ellipses. A simple numerical procedure for calculating thermodynamic equilibrium states for an arbitrary distribution of stars over masses and semimajor axes is described. Spontaneous symmetry breaking and breakdown of thermodynamics at low positive temperatures are rigorously proven for nonrotating clusters. Rotation is introduced through a second temperature-like parameter. Both axially symmetric and lopsided rotational equilibria are found; the lopsided equilibria precess with the angular velocity that is given by the ratio of the two temperatures. The eccentric stellar disk in the nucleus of the Andromeda galaxy may be an example of a lopsided thermodynamic equilibrium of a rotating black hole star cluster. Stellar-mass black holes occupy highly eccentric orbits in broken-symmetry star clusters, and form flattened disklike configurations in rotating star clusters. They are attracted to orbits that are stationary in the frame of reference rotating with the angular velocity of the cluster. In spherical clusters, stellar-mass black holes' orbits are significantly more eccentric than those of the lighter stars if the temperature is negative and more circular if the temperature is positive. Finally, we note that planets, comets, dark matter particles, and other light bodies tend to form a spherically symmetric nonrotating subcluster with maximum-entropy eccentricity distribution $s_{cr}P\left(e\right)=2e$, even if their host cluster is rotating and lopsided.