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ABSTRACT We use the general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamics code KORAL to simulate the accretion disc formation resulting from the tidal disruption of a solar mass star around a supermassive black hole (BH) of mass 106 M⊙. We simulate the disruption of artificially more bound stars with orbital eccentricity e ≤ 0.99 (compared to the more realistic case of parabolic orbits with e = 1) on close orbits with impact parameter β ≥ 3. We use a novel method of injecting the tidal stream into the domain, and we begin the stream injection at the peak fallback rate in this study. For two simulations, we choose e = 0.99 and inject mass at a rate that is similar to parabolic TDEs. We find that the disc only becomes mildly circularized with eccentricity e ≈ 0.6 within the 3.5 d that we simulate. The rate of circularization is faster for pericenter radii that come closer to the BH. The emitted radiation is mildly super-Eddington with $$L_{\rm {bol}}\approx 3{-}5\, L_{\rm {Edd}}$$ and the photosphere is highly asymmetric with the photosphere being significantly closer to the inner accretion disc for viewing angles near pericenter. We find that soft X-ray radiation with Trad ≈ 3–5 × 105 K may be visible for chance viewing angles. Our simulations suggest that TDEs should be radiatively inefficient with η ≈ 0.009–0.014.
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Tidal disruption discs formed and fed by stream–stream and stream–disc interactions in global GRHD simulations
ABSTRACT When a star passes close to a supermassive black hole (BH), the BH’s tidal forces rip it apart into a thin stream, leading to a tidal disruption event (TDE). In this work, we study the post-disruption phase of TDEs in general relativistic hydrodynamics (GRHD) using our GPU-accelerated code h-amr. We carry out the first grid-based simulation of a deep-penetration TDE (β = 7) with realistic system parameters: a black hole-to-star mass ratio of 106, a parabolic stellar trajectory, and a non-zero BH spin. We also carry out a simulation of a tilted TDE whose stellar orbit is inclined relative to the BH midplane. We show that for our aligned TDE, an accretion disc forms due to the dissipation of orbital energy with ∼20 per cent of the infalling material reaching the BH. The dissipation is initially dominated by violent self-intersections and later by stream–disc interactions near the pericentre. The self-intersections completely disrupt the incoming stream, resulting in five distinct self-intersection events separated by approximately 12 h and a flaring in the accretion rate. We also find that the disc is eccentric with mean eccentricity e ≈ 0.88. For our tilted TDE, we find only partial self-intersections due to nodal precession near pericentre. Although these partial intersections eject gas out of the orbital plane, an accretion disc still forms with a similar accreted fraction of the material to the aligned case. These results have important implications for disc formation in realistic tidal disruptions. For instance, the periodicity in accretion rate induced by the complete stream disruption may explain the flaring events from Swift J1644+57.
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- PAR ID:
- 10361151
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 510
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 1627-1648
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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