Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The rising part of a tidal disruption event light curve provides unique insight into early emission and the onset of accretion. Various mechanisms are proposed to explain the pre-peak emission, including shocks from debris interaction and reprocessing of disk emission. We study the pre-peak emission and its influence on the gas circularization by a series of gray radiation hydrodynamic simulations with varying black hole mass. We find that, given a super-Eddington fallback rate of 10 M ̇ Edd , the stream–stream collision can occur multiple times and drive strong outflows of up to 9 M ̇ Edd . By dispersing gas to ≳100r s , the outflow can delay gas circularization and leads to sub-Eddington accretion rates during the first few stream–stream collisions. The stream–stream collision shock and circularization shock can sustain a luminosity of ∼1044 erg s−1 for days. The luminosity is generally sub-Eddington and shows a weak correlation with accretion rate at early times. The outflow is optically thick, yielding a reprocessing layer with a size of ∼1014 cm and photospheric temperature of ∼4 × 104 K.
Source: The Astrophysical Journal
Institution: University of Virginia
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,499
Awards: G1453181110, G1693976111, Track 4: Advanced CI Coordination Ecosystem: Monitoring and Measurement Services, G2747059265, G2815302120, G3339971651, G3562386289, Track 1: ACCESS Resource Allocations Marketplace and Platform Services (RAMPS), G4010157413, G4248962021, ACO: An Open CI Ecosystem to Advance Scientific Discovery (OpenCI), Track 3: COre National Ecosystem for CyberinfrasTructure (CONECT), G5367127336, G5464919783, G6128126499, Collaborative Research: The Radiation Magnetohydrodynamics of Tidal Disruption Events, Track 2: Customized Multi-tier Assistance, Training, and Computational Help (MATCH) for End User ACCESS to CI
OpenAlex ID: W4403311543