Simulating Black Hole White Dwarf Encounters

Abstract

The existence of supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies and of stellar binary systems containing a black hole with a few solar masses has been established beyond reasonable doubt. The idea that black holes of intermediate masses ($\sim 1000$ \msun) may exist in globular star clusters has gained credence over recent years but no conclusive evidence has been established yet. An attractive feature of this hypothesis is the potential to not only disrupt solar-type stars but also compact white dwarf stars. In close encounters the white dwarfs can be sufficiently compressed to thermonuclearly explode. The detection of an underluminous thermonuclear explosion accompanied by a soft, transient X-ray signal would be compelling evidence for the presence of intermediate mass black holes in stellar clusters. In this paper we focus on the numerical techniques used to simulate the entire disruption process from the initial parabolic orbit, over the nuclear energy release during tidal compression, the subsequent ejection of freshly synthesized material and the formation process of an accretion disk around the black hole.

9 pages, 4 figures, Computer Physics Communications, accepted; movie can be found at http://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/srosswog/; reference corrected

References in corpus (18)

• Cosmological SPH simulations: The entropy equation
• The formation of massive black holes through collision runaway in dense young star clusters
• Mergers of neutron star black hole binaries with small mass ratios: nucleosynthesis, gamma-ray bursts and electromagnetic transients
• An Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Globular Cluster G1: Improved Significance from New Keck and Hubble Space Telescope Observations
• Hubble Space Telescope Evidence for an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Globular Cluster M15: II. Kinematical Analysis and Dynamical Modeling
• Chandra Observations of "The Antennae" Galaxies (NGC 4038/39)
• A 20 Thousand Solar Mass Black Hole in the Stellar Cluster G1
• SPH compressible turbulence
• The X-ray Source Population of "The Antennae" Galaxies: X-ray Properties from Chandra and Multiwavelength Associations
• MAGMA: a 3D, Lagrangian magnetohydrodynamics code for merger applications
• High Resolution Calculations of Merging Neutron Stars I: Model Description and Hydrodynamic Evolution
• Addendum: "Hubble Space Telescope Evidence for an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in the Globular Cluster M15: II. Kinematical Analysis and Dynamical Modeling"
• Supermassive Black Holes and the Evolution of Galaxies
• Atypical Thermonuclear Supernovae from Tidally Crushed White Dwarfs
• X-rays from the Globular Cluster G1: Intermediate Mass Black Hole or Low Mass X-ray Binary?
• Merging neutron stars: asymmetric systems
• The QSE-reduced αNetwork
• White Dwarfs Near Black Holes: A New Paradigm for Type I Supernovae

Cited by in corpus (37)

• On the astrophysical robustness of neutron star merger r-process
• Stellar disruption by a supermassive black hole: is the light curve really proportional to $t^{-5/3}$?
• Neutrino signatures and the neutrino-driven wind in Binary Neutron Star Mergers
• The long-term evolution of neutron star merger remnants - I. The impact of r-process nucleosynthesis
• The Electromagnetic Signals of Compact Binary Mergers
• Tidal disruption and ignition of white dwarfs by moderately massive black holes
• The long-term evolution of neutron star merger remnants - II. Radioactively powered transients
• The multi-messenger picture of compact object encounters: binary mergers versus dynamical collisions
• Prelude to a double degenerate merger: the onset of mass transfer and its impact on gravitational waves and surface detonations
• Collisions of white dwarfs as a new progenitor channel for type Ia supernovae
• Astrophysical Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics
• The structure and fate of white dwarf merger remnants
• Detectability of compact binary merger macronovae
• The Tidal Disruption of Giant Stars and Their Contribution to the Flaring Supermassive Black Hole Population
• The star ingesting luminosity of intermediate mass black holes in globular clusters
• Magnetohydrodynamical simulations of a tidal disruption in general relativity
• How the merger of two white dwarfs depends on their mass ratio: orbital stability and detonations at contact
• Optical Thermonuclear Transients From Tidal Compression of White Dwarfs as Tracers of the Low End of the Massive Black Hole Mass Function
• Tidal disruptions by rotating black holes: effects of spin and impact parameter
• Stellar Tidal Disruption Events with Abundances and Realistic Structures (STARS): Library of Fallback Rates
• Tidal disruptions by rotating black holes: relativistic hydrodynamics with Newtonian codes
• Low-mass White Dwarfs with Hydrogen Envelopes as a Missing Link in the Tidal Disruption Menu
• A fast recursive coordinate bisection tree for neighbour search and gravity
• Merger of white dwarf-neutron star binaries: Prelude to hydrodynamic simulations in general relativity
• Does Explosive Nuclear Burning occur in Tidal Disruption Events of White Dwarfs by Intermediate Mass Black Holes ?
• Signatures of Bimodality in Nebular Phase Type Ia Supernova Spectra
• High-resolution hydrodynamic simulation of tidal detonation of a helium white dwarf by an intermediate mass black hole
• Mass transfer dynamics in double degenerate binary systems
• On the Tidal Capture of White Dwarfs by Intermediate-mass Black Holes in Dense Stellar Environments
• MOCCA-SURVEY Database -- I. Tidal disruption events of white dwarfs in globular clusters and young massive clusters
• Examining the Accuracy of Astrophysical Disk Simulations With a Generalized Hydrodynamical Test Problem
• Rethinking Thorne-Żytkow Object Formation: The Fate of X-ray Binary LMC X-4 and Implications for Ultra-long Gamma-ray Bursts
• Tidal double detonation: a new mechanism for a thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf induced by a tidal disruption event
• SPH Methods in the Modelling of Compact Objects
• Tidally-induced thermonuclear Supernovae
• Unveiling the nature of the Einstein Probe transient EP 241021a
• Special Relativistic Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Based on Riemann Solver