Extremely Relativistic Tidal Disruption Events

Abstract

Extreme tidal disruption events (eTDEs), which occur when a star passes very close to a supermassive black hole, may provide a way to observe a long-sought general relativistic effect: orbits that wind several times around a black hole and then leave. Through general relativistic hydrodynamics simulations, we show that such eTDEs are easily distinguished from most tidal disruptions, in which stars come close, but not so close, to the black hole. Following the stellar orbit, the debris in eTDEs is initially distributed in a crescent that quickly turns into tight spirals, from which some mass later falls back toward the black hole, while the remainder is ejected. Internal shocks within the infalling debris power the observed emission. The resulting light-curve rises rapidly to roughly the Eddington luminosity, maintains this level for between a few weeks and a year (depending on both the stellar mass and the black hole mass), and then drops. Most of its power is in thermal X-rays at a temperature $\sim (1-2)\times 10^6$ K ($\sim 100-200$ eV). The debris evolution and observational features of eTDEs are qualitatively different from ordinary TDEs, making eTDEs a new type of TDE. Although eTDEs are relatively rare for lower-mass black holes, most tidal disruptions around higher-mass black holes are extreme. Their detection offers a view of an exotic relativistic phenomenon previously inaccessible.

arXiv comment13 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJL, movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX4B8TIQDj4&list=PLxLK3qI02cQdGdFe6zwBc_1sb-XDW-mPk

References in corpus (31)

• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• Hydrodynamical Simulations to Determine the Feeding Rate of Black Holes by the Tidal Disruption of Stars: The Importance of the Impact Parameter and Stellar Structure
• Tidal Disruption Events
• Rates of Stellar Tidal Disruption as Probes of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function
• Stellar disruption by a supermassive black hole: is the light curve really proportional to $t^{-5/3}$?
• Seventeen Tidal Disruption Events from the First Half of ZTF Survey Observations: Entering a New Era of Population Studies
• General Relativistic Hydrodynamic Simulation of Accretion Flow from a Stellar Tidal Disruption
• New physical insights about Tidal Disruption Events from a comprehensive observational inventory at X-ray wavelengths
• Direct calculation of the radiative efficiency of an accretion disk around a black hole
• Self-intersection of the Fallback Stream in Tidal Disruption Events
• Revisiting optical tidal disruption events with iPTF16axa
• Gravitational Wave and X-ray Signals from Stellar Disruption by a Massive Black Hole
• Late-time UV observations of tidal disruption flares reveal unobscured, compact accretion disks
• ASASSN-14li: A Model Tidal Disruption Event
• Radius constraints and minimal equipartition energy of relativistically moving synchrotron sources
• Follow-Up Chandra Observations of Three Candidate Tidal Disruption Events
• Implications from Late-Time X-ray Detections of Optically Selected Tidal Disruption Events: State Changes, Unification, and Detection Rates
• Tidal disruptions by rotating black holes: effects of spin and impact parameter
• Tidal Disruptions of Main Sequence Stars -- I. Observable Quantities and their Dependence on Stellar and Black Hole Mass
• Tidal disruptions of main sequence stars -- II. Simulation methodology and stellar mass dependence of the character of full tidal disruptions
• Tidal disruptions by rotating black holes: relativistic hydrodynamics with Newtonian codes
• Hydrodynamical moving-mesh simulations of the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes
• Elliptical accretion and inefficient highly eccentric accretion and the low luminosity of stellar tidal disruption events
• Tidal disruption of a star in the Schwarzschild spacetime: relativistic effects in the return rate of debris
• Radio Emission from the unbound Debris of Tidal Disruption Events
• Radio constraint on outflows from tidal disruption events
• Estimating the Prompt Electromagnetic Luminosity of a Black Hole Merger
• Ultra-Close Encounters of Stars With Massive Black Holes: Tidal Disruption Events With Prompt Hyperaccretion
• Tidal Disruptions of Main Sequence Stars -- V. The Varieties of Disruptions
• Ultra-deep tidal disruption events: prompt self-intersections and observables

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Demographics of Tidal Disruption Events with L-Galaxies: I. Volumetric TDE rates and the abundance of Nuclear Star Clusters
• The effect of relativistic precession on light curves of tidal disruption events
• Tidal disruption rate suppression by the event horizon of spinning black holes
• Radiation pressure role in accreting massive black hole binaries
• Discovery of a Featureless Tidal Disruption Event at z~1 with the Wide Field Survey Telescope