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Abstract Stars grazing supermassive black holes on bound orbits may produce periodic flares over many passages, known as repeating partial tidal disruption events (TDEs). Here, we present 3D hydrodynamic simulations of Sun-like stars over multiple tidal encounters. The star is significantly restructured and becomes less concentrated as a result of mass loss and tidal heating. The vulnerability to mass loss depends sensitively on the stellar density structure, and the strong correlation between the fractional mass loss ΔM/M*and the ratio of the central and average density , which was initially derived in disruption simulations of main-sequence stars, also applies for stars strongly reshaped by tides. Over multiple orbits, the star loses progressively more mass in each encounter and is doomed to a complete disruption. Throughout its lifetime, the star may produce numerous weak flares (depending on the initial impact parameter), followed by a couple of luminous flares whose brightness increases exponentially. Flux-limited surveys are heavily biased toward the brightest flares, which may appear similar to the flare produced by the same star undergoing a full disruption on its first tidal encounter. This places new challenges on constraining the intrinsic TDE rates, which need to take repeating TDEs into account. Other types of stars with different initial density structures (e.g., evolved stars with massive cores) follow distinct evolution tracks, which might explain the diversity of the long-term luminosity evolution seen in recently uncovered repeaters.
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Tidal Disruption Events from Eccentric Orbits and Lessons Learned from the Noteworthy ASASSN-14ko
Abstract Stars grazing supermassive black holes (SMBHs) on bound orbits may survive tidal disruption, causing periodic flares. Inspired by the recent discovery of the periodic nuclear transient ASASSN-14ko, a promising candidate for a repeating tidal disruption event (TDE), we study the tidal deformation of stars approaching SMBHs on eccentric orbits. With both analytical and hydrodynamic methods, we show the overall tidal deformation of a star is similar to that in a parabolic orbit provided that the eccentricity is above a critical value. This allows one to make use of existing simulation libraries from parabolic encounters to calculate the mass fallback rate in eccentric TDEs. We find the flare structures of eccentric TDEs show a complicated dependence on both the SMBH mass and the orbital period. For stars orbiting SMBHs with relatively short periods, we predict significantly shorter-lived duration flares than those in parabolic TDEs, which can be used to predict repeating events if the mass of the SMBH can be independently measured. Using an adiabatic mass-loss model, we study the flare evolution over multiple passages, and show the evolved stars can survive many more passages than main-sequence stars. We apply this theoretical framework to the repeating TDE candidate ASASSN-14ko and suggest that its recurrent flares originate from a moderately massive ( M ≳ 1 M ⊙ ), extended (likely ≈10 R ⊙ ), evolved star on a grazing, bound orbit around the SMBH. Future hydrodynamic simulations of multiple tidal interactions will enable realistic models on the individual flare structure and the evolution over multiple flares.
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- PAR ID:
- 10451484
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Volume:
- 944
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0004-637X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 184
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acafe1
