2018MNRAS.478L.127N

Sgr A* is the supermassive black hole residing in the centre of the Milky Way. There is plenty of observational evidence that a massive gas cloud fell into the central parsec of the Milky Way ∼6 Myr ago, triggering formation of a disc of young stars and activating Sgr A*. In addition to the disc, there is an unexplained population of young stars on randomly oriented orbits. Here we hypothesize that these young stars were formed by fragmentation of a massive quasi-spherical gas shell driven out from Sgr A* potential well by an energetic outflow. To account for the properties of the observed stars, the shell must be more massive than 10⁵ solar masses, be launched from inside ∼0.01 pc, and the feedback outflow has to be highly super-Eddington albeit for a brief period of time, producing kinetic energy of at least 10⁵⁵ erg. The young stars in the central parsec of the Galaxy may be a unique example of stars formed from atomic rather than molecular hydrogen, and forged by extreme pressure of black hole outflows.