UCLA

Our Galactic center presents a unique location where we can study the interaction of stellar populations with a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) in detail. Despite this, our knowledge of these interactions, along with the origins of the stellar populations, are poorly understood. In this thesis, I used high-resolution spectroscopy to determine the $\alpha$-element abundances of two metal-poor stars in the Galactic center, providing additional evidence that the metal-poor population of old stars in the Galactic center are the remnants of a past merger event. I also conducted the longest time baseline (1994-2024) kinematic study of Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in the Galactic center, using 180+ new radial velocity measurements combined with new astrometry. This study detected 3 new candidate WR binaries, and I infer a binary fraction >0.67 at 68% confidence for the Galactic Center WR stars. I additionally measured the orbits of 5 of the innermost WR stars, 2 of which are newly reported here and the other 3 are improvements on literature orbits. These new orbits are used to then infer a new accretion rate estimate for material from the WR star winds onto the SMBH Sgr A*, which incorporates the effect of binarity on the accretion flow from the winds for the first time.