An upper observable black hole mass scale for tidal disruption events with thermal X-ray spectra

Andrew Mummery; Steven Balbus

doi:10.1093/mnras/stab1141

paper

An upper observable black hole mass scale for tidal disruption events with thermal X-ray spectra

arXiv:2104.06177 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stab1141

Abstract

We comprehensively model the X-ray luminosity emergent from time dependent relativistic accretion discs, developing analytical models of the X-ray luminosity of thermal disc systems as a function of black hole mass $M$ , disc mass $M_{d}$ , and disc $α$ -parameter. The X-ray properties of these solutions will be directly relevant for understanding TDE observations. We demonstrate an extremely strong suppression of thermal X-ray luminosity from large mass black holes, $L_{X} \sim exp (- m^{7/6})$ , where $m$ is a dimensionless mass, roughly the the black hole mass in unity of $1 0^{6}$ M $_{⊙}$ . This strong suppression results in upper-observable black hole mass limits, which we demonstrate to be of order $M_{lim} ≃ 3 \times 1 0^{7} M_{⊙}$ , above which thermal X-ray emission will not be observable. This upper observable black hole mass limit is a function of the remaining disc parameters, and the full dependence can be described analytically (eq. 82). We demonstrate that the current population of observed X-ray TDEs is indeed consistent with an upper black hole mass limit of order $M \sim 1 0^{7} M_{⊙}$ , consistent with our analysis.

v2: Updated with more sources added to Table 2, now matches journal version. v1: 15 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

An upper observable black hole mass scale for tidal disruption events with thermal X-ray spectra

Abstract

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