The Distribution of Stars and Stellar Remnants at the Galactic Center
  Motivated by recent observations that suggest a low density of old stars
around the Milky Way supermassive black hole, models for the nuclear star
cluster are considered that have not yet reached a steady state under the
influence of gravitational encounters. A core of initial radius 1-1.5 pc
evolves to a size of approximately 0.5 pc after 10 Gyr, roughly the size of the
observed core. The absence of a Bahcall-Wolf cusp is naturally explained in
these models, without the need for fine-tuning or implausible initial
conditions. In the absence of a cusp, the time for a 10-solar-mass black hole
to spiral in to the Galactic center from an initial distance of 5 pc can be
much greater than 10 Gyr. Assuming that the stellar black holes had the same
phase-space distribution initially as the stars, their density after 5-10 Gyr
is predicted to rise very steeply going into the stellar core, but could remain
substantially below the densities inferred from steady-state models that
include a steep density cusp in the stars. Possible mechanisms for the creation
of the parsec-scale initial core include destruction of stars on centrophilic
orbits in a pre-existing triaxial nucleus, inhibited star formation near the
supermassive black hole, or ejection of stars by a massive binary. The
implications of these models are discussed for the rates of gravitational-wave
inspiral events, as well as other physical processes that depend on a high
density of stars or stellar mass black holes near Sagittarius A*.
