Black Holes and Galaxy Metamorphosis

Abstract

Supermassive black holes can be seen as an agent of galaxy transformation. In particular, a supermassive black hole can cause a triaxial galaxy to evolve toward axisymmetry by inducing chaos in centrophilic orbit families. This is one way in which a single supermassive black hole can induce large-scale changes in the structure of its host galaxy -- changes on scales far larger than the Schwarzschild radius ($O(10^{-5}) \rm{pc}$) and the radius of influence of the black hole ($O(1)-O(100) \rm{pc}$). We will discuss the transformative power of supermassive black holes in light of recent high resolution N-body realizations of cuspy triaxial galaxies.