paper

Soft X-ray Temperature Tidal Disruption Events from Stars on Deep Plunging Orbits

arXiv:1507.04333 · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/812/2/L39

Abstract

One of the puzzles associated with tidal disruption event candidates (TDEs) is that there is a dichotomy between the color temperatures of ~K for TDEs discovered with optical and UV telescopes, and the color temperatures of ~K for TDEs discovered with X-ray satellites. Here we propose that high-temperature TDEs are produced when the tidal debris of a disrupted star self-intersects relatively close to the supermassive black hole, in contrast to the more distant self-intersection that leads to lower color temperatures. In particular, we note from simple ballistic considerations that greater apsidal precession in an orbit is the key to closer self-intersection. Thus larger values of , the ratio of the tidal radius to the pericenter distance of the initial orbit, are more likely to lead to higher temperatures of more compact disks which are super-Eddington and geometrically and optically thick. For a given star and , apsidal precession also increases for larger black hole masses, but larger black hole masses imply a lower temperature at the Eddington luminosity. Thus the expected dependence of the temperature on the mass of the black hole is non-monotonic. We find that in order to produce a soft X-ray temperature TDE, a deep plunging stellar orbit with is needed and a black hole mass of is favored. Although observations of TDEs are comparatively scarce and are likely dominated by selection effects, it is encouraging that both expectations are consistent with current data.

10 pages, 4 figures, accepted by the Astrophysical Journal Letters

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