Stellar-wind-fueled Accretion onto Sagittarius A* in the Presence of a Nuclear Star Cluster

Abstract The Milky Way’s Galactic center hosts the black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which provides us with a close-up view into supermassive black hole accretion and feedback. Recent works have shown that the winds from ∼30 Wolf–Rayet (WR) stars orbiting Sgr A* at about 4″ are important contributors to feeding the supermassive black hole. A nuclear star cluster (NSC) with a mass of several 10 6 M ⊙ , of which 10 6 M ⊙ is within 1 pc, also surrounds Sgr A*. The NSC contributes to the gravitational potential in the Galactic center, affecting the orbits of the WR stars and their stellar winds. In this work, we examine the effects that the NSC has on the accretion of these stellar winds onto Sgr A*, which have previously been neglected. We find that, on the parsec scale, the effect from the gravitational potential of the NSC is negligible on the wind-fed accretion flow, validating the existing simulations used in the literature.