Ultra-Close Encounters of Stars With Massive Black Holes: Tidal Disruption Events With Prompt Hyperaccretion

Abstract

A bright flare from a galactic nucleus followed at late times by a $t^{-5/3}$ decay in luminosity is often considered the signature of the complete tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole. The flare and power-law decay are produced when the stream of bound debris returns to the black hole, self-intersects, and eventually forms an accretion disk or torus. In the canonical scenario of a solar-type star disrupted by a $10^6{M}_{\odot }$ black hole, the time between the disruption of the star and the formation of the accretion torus could be years. We present fully general relativistic simulations of a new class of tidal disruption events involving ultra-close encounters of solar-type stars with intermediate mass black holes. In these encounters, a thick disk forms promptly after disruption, on timescales of hours. After a brief initial flare, the accretion rate remains steady and highly super-Eddington for a few days at $\sim 10^2{M}_{\odot }{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$.

5 pages, 1 table, 4 figures. Accepted for publication ApJL

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• Nuclear Ignition of White Dwarf Stars by Relativistic Encounters with Rotating Intermediate Mass Black Holes
• Inside the Final Black Hole: Puncture and Trapped Surface Dynamics
• Black Hole - Neutron Star Binary Mergers: The Imprint of Tidal Deformations and Debris
• Stars Crushed by Black Holes. III. Mild Compression of Radiative Stars by Supermassive Black Holes
• Studying the radiation of a white dwarf star falling onto a black hole