Searching for IMBHs in Galactic globular clusters through radial velocities of individual stars

Abstract

Abstract. I present an overview of our ongoing project aimed at building a new generation of velocity dispersion profiles ad rotation curves for a representative sample of Galactic globular clusters, from the the radial velocity of hundreds of individual stars distributed at different distances from the cluster center. The innermost portion of the profiles will be used to constrain the possible presence of intermediate-mass black holes. The adopted methodology consists of combining spectroscopic observations acquired with three different instruments at the ESO-VLT: the adaptive-optics assisted, integral field unit (IFU) spectrograph SINFONI for the innermost and highly crowded cluster cores, the multi-IFU spectrograph KMOS for the intermediate regions, and the multi-fiber instrument FLAMES/GIRAFFE-MEDUSA for the outskirts. The case of NGC 6388, representing the pilot project that motivated the entire program, is described in some details.