Light curves of time-dependent accretion disk in tidal disruption events

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Hauptverfasser: Guo, Chenlei, Qiao, Erlin
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Guo, Chenlei
Qiao, Erlin
author_facet Guo, Chenlei
Qiao, Erlin
contents Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are believed to be an ideal laboratory for studying the evolution of accretion flow around a supermassive black hole (BH). In general, the mass feeding rate to the BH is suggested to be super-Eddington initially, and evolves to be sub-Eddington on timescales of years. In this paper, we carry out calculations of the time-dependent evolution of accretion disk in the standard environment of TDE, i.e., injecting matter at the circularization radius of the stellar debris in the form of $\dot M_{\rm inject} \propto t^{-5/3}$. One of the main findings is that when $\dot M_{\rm inject}$ evolves to a value around the Eddington accretion rate, the radiation pressure instability occurs. We test the influence of the model parameters on the light curves, such as the BH mass $M_{\rm BH}$, viscosity parameter $α$, and mass-injecting radius $R_{\rm{out}}$, all of which are found to affect the light curves to some extent. In most cases, we find that the light curves oscillate significantly due to the radiation pressure instability. As an exception, when $α$ is small or $R_{\rm{out}}$ is large, we find that the oscillations are completely suppressed. In this case, the light curve drops steeply and then becomes flat in the late-time evolution, which we apply to explain the observed ultraviolet (UV) light curves of ASASSN-15oi and ASASSN-14ae together with the assumption of a photosphere. Finally, we discuss the potential applications of our time-dependent accretion disk model to explaining multi-band light curves of TDEs in the future.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_16544
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Light curves of time-dependent accretion disk in tidal disruption events
Guo, Chenlei
Qiao, Erlin
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are believed to be an ideal laboratory for studying the evolution of accretion flow around a supermassive black hole (BH). In general, the mass feeding rate to the BH is suggested to be super-Eddington initially, and evolves to be sub-Eddington on timescales of years. In this paper, we carry out calculations of the time-dependent evolution of accretion disk in the standard environment of TDE, i.e., injecting matter at the circularization radius of the stellar debris in the form of $\dot M_{\rm inject} \propto t^{-5/3}$. One of the main findings is that when $\dot M_{\rm inject}$ evolves to a value around the Eddington accretion rate, the radiation pressure instability occurs. We test the influence of the model parameters on the light curves, such as the BH mass $M_{\rm BH}$, viscosity parameter $α$, and mass-injecting radius $R_{\rm{out}}$, all of which are found to affect the light curves to some extent. In most cases, we find that the light curves oscillate significantly due to the radiation pressure instability. As an exception, when $α$ is small or $R_{\rm{out}}$ is large, we find that the oscillations are completely suppressed. In this case, the light curve drops steeply and then becomes flat in the late-time evolution, which we apply to explain the observed ultraviolet (UV) light curves of ASASSN-15oi and ASASSN-14ae together with the assumption of a photosphere. Finally, we discuss the potential applications of our time-dependent accretion disk model to explaining multi-band light curves of TDEs in the future.
title Light curves of time-dependent accretion disk in tidal disruption events
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16544