Eddington envelopes: The fate of stars on parabolic orbits tidally disrupted by supermassive black holes

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Price, Daniel J., Liptai, David, Mandel, Ilya, Shepherd, Joanna, Lodato, Giuseppe, Levin, Yuri
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866929415475167232
author Price, Daniel J.
Liptai, David
Mandel, Ilya
Shepherd, Joanna
Lodato, Giuseppe
Levin, Yuri
author_facet Price, Daniel J.
Liptai, David
Mandel, Ilya
Shepherd, Joanna
Lodato, Giuseppe
Levin, Yuri
contents Stars falling too close to massive black holes in the centres of galaxies can be torn apart by the strong tidal forces. Simulating the subsequent feeding of the black hole with disrupted material has proved challenging because of the range of timescales involved. Here we report a set of simulations that capture the relativistic disruption of the star, followed by one year of evolution of the returning debris stream. These reveal the formation of an expanding asymmetric bubble of material extending to hundreds of astronomical units -- an outflowing Eddington envelope with an optically thick inner region. Such envelopes have been hypothesised as the reprocessing layer needed to explain optical/UV emission in tidal disruption events, but never produced self-consistently in a simulation. Our model broadly matches the observed light curves with low temperatures, faint luminosities, and line widths of 10,000--20,000 km/s.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_09381
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Eddington envelopes: The fate of stars on parabolic orbits tidally disrupted by supermassive black holes
Price, Daniel J.
Liptai, David
Mandel, Ilya
Shepherd, Joanna
Lodato, Giuseppe
Levin, Yuri
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Stars falling too close to massive black holes in the centres of galaxies can be torn apart by the strong tidal forces. Simulating the subsequent feeding of the black hole with disrupted material has proved challenging because of the range of timescales involved. Here we report a set of simulations that capture the relativistic disruption of the star, followed by one year of evolution of the returning debris stream. These reveal the formation of an expanding asymmetric bubble of material extending to hundreds of astronomical units -- an outflowing Eddington envelope with an optically thick inner region. Such envelopes have been hypothesised as the reprocessing layer needed to explain optical/UV emission in tidal disruption events, but never produced self-consistently in a simulation. Our model broadly matches the observed light curves with low temperatures, faint luminosities, and line widths of 10,000--20,000 km/s.
title Eddington envelopes: The fate of stars on parabolic orbits tidally disrupted by supermassive black holes
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09381