Tidal Disruption Event Disks around Supermassive Black Holes: Disk Warp and Inclination Evolution


Abstract in English

After the Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) of a star around a SuperMassive Black Hole (SMBH), the bound stellar debris rapidly forms an accretion disk. If the accretion disk is not aligned with the spinning SMBHs equatorial plane, the disk will be driven into Lense-Thirring precession around the SMBHs spin axis, possibly affecting the TDEs light curve. We carry out an eigenmode analysis of such a disk to understand how the disks warp structure, precession, and inclination evolution are influenced by the disks and SMBHs properties. We find an oscillatory warp may develop as a result of strong non-Keplarian motion near the SMBH. The global disk precession frequency matches the Lense-Thirring precession frequency of a rigid disk around a spinning black hole within a factor of a few when the disks accretion rate is high, but deviates significantly at low accretion rates. Viscosity aligns the disk with the SMBHs equatorial plane over timescales of days to years, depending on the disks accretion rate, viscosity, and SMBHs mass. We also examine the effect of fall-back material on the warp evolution of TDE disks, and find that the fall-back torque aligns the TDE disk with the SMBHs equatorial plane in a few to tens of days for the parameter space investigated. Our results place constraints on models of TDE emission which rely on the changing disk orientation with respect to the line of sight to explain observations.

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