Tidal Disruption of a Solar-Type Star by a Supermassive Black Hole

By S. Ayal, M. Livio, T. Piran. 2000

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the long-term evolution of a solar-type star that is being disrupted by a supermassive (106 M☉) black hole. The evolution is followed from the disruption event, which turns the star into a long, thin stream of gas, to the point at which some of this gas returns to pericenter and begins its second orbit around the black hole. Following the evolution for this long allows us to determine the amount of mass that is accreted by the black hole. We find that approximately 75% of the returning mass is not accreted but instead becomes unbound, following the large compression characterizing the return to pericenter. The impact of a tidal disruption on the surrounding gas may therefore be like that of two consecutive supernova-type events.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a2cf1891d2016df16660f00478e41e5d3903ea9f

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Citations in the corpus

A NEW POPULATION OF ULTRA-LONG DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2013, background): “In practice simulations suggest that the rise time of a TDE is at least this, with activity expected for much longer (> 106 s, e.g., Ayal et al. 2000; Lodato & Rossi 2011).”
Multiband light curves of tidal disruption events (2010, methodology): “This simple picture has been extensively tested numerically (Nolthenius & Katz 1982; Evans & Kochanek 1989; Laguna et al. 1993; Ayal et al. 2000).”
A bright year for tidal disruptions (2015, background): “…with the centers of their host galaxies; luminosities close to or exceeding the Eddington luminosity for the inferred BH mass; and a characteristic light curve decay similar to the predicted ∝ t−5/3 fall-back rate of stellar debris following a TDE (Rees 1988; Ayal et al. 2000; Lodato et al. 2009).”
New Physical Insights about Tidal Disruption Events from a Comprehensive Observational Inventory at X-Ray Wavelengths (2016, background): “A fraction of the stellar debris of this now destroyed star will be expelled on unbound orbits and escape from the BH, while ∼ 0.5M? will be confined to highly eccentric, bound orbits (Rees 1988; Evans & Kochanek 1989; Ayal et al. 2000).”
Weighing Black Holes Using Tidal Disruption Events (2018, background): “…& Kochanek 1989; Kesden 2012; Cheng & Bogdanović 2014; Tejeda et al. 2017), as well as the properties of the star (Lodato et al. 2009; Haas et al. 2012; Law-Smith et al. 2017) and the mechanics of the disruption and accretion processes (Ayal et al. 2000; Rosswog et al. 2009; Bonnerot et al. 2016b).”
Radio transients from stellar tidal disruption by massive black holes (2011, background): “Analytic estimates and numerical calculations show that the process of disruption leaves a significant fraction of the shredded star gravitationally bound to the black hole (e.g. Rees 1988; Ayal et al. 2000).”
Ultraviolet Detection of the Tidal Disruption of a Star by a Supermassive Black Hole (2006, background): “5M 1988; Ayal et al. 2000), falls back onto the black hole and is accreted.”
Optical Flares from the Tidal Disruption of Stars by Massive Black Holes (2009, background): “Some fraction of the returning gas is thus likely unbound (see, e.g., the simulations of Ayal et al. 2000), with energy being conserved as other gas accretes inward (Blandford & Begelman 1999).”
Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Disappearing Central Engine of the Quasar J1011+5442 (2015, methodology): “Analytic calculations (Phinney 1989) and numerical modeling (e.g., Evans & Kochanek 1989; Ayal et al. 2000) of TDEs predict that the light curve of a TDE will decline as tα, where α = −5/3.”