No Arabic abstract
Accretion onto black holes is an efficient mechanism in converting the gas mass-energy into energetic outputs as radiation, wind and jet. Tidal disruption events, in which stars are tidally torn apart and then accreted onto supermassive black holes, offer unique opportunities of studying the accretion physics as well as the wind and jet launching physics across different accretion regimes. In this review, we systematically describe and discuss the models that have been developed to study the accretion flows and jets in tidal disruption events. A good knowledge of these physics is not only needed for understanding the emissions of the observed events, but also crucial for probing the general relativistic space-time around black holes and the demographics of supermassive black holes via tidal disruption events.
We construct a time-dependent relativistic accretion model for tidal disruption events (TDEs) with an $alpha-$viscosity and the pressure dominated by gas pressure. We also include the mass fallback rate $dot{M}_f$ for both full and partial disruption TDEs, and assume that the infalling debris forms a seed disc in time $t_c$, which evolves due to the mass addition from the infalling debris and the mass loss via accretion onto the black hole. Besides, we derive an explicit form for the disc height that depends on the angular momentum parameter in the disc. We show that the surface density of the disc increases at an initial time due to mass addition, and then decreases as the mass fallback rate decreases, which results in a decrease in the disc mass $M_{rm d}$ with a late-time evolution of $M_{rm d} propto t^{-1.05}$ and $M_{rm d} propto t^{-1.38}$ for full and partial disruption TDEs respectively, where $t$ is the time parameter. The bolometric luminosity $L$ shows a rise and decline that follows a power-law at late times given by $L propto t^{-1.8}$ and $L propto t^{-2.3}$ for full and partial disruption TDEs respectively. Our obtained luminosity declines faster than the luminosity inferred using $L propto dot{M}_f$. We also compute the light curves in various spectral bands.
We study the rates of tidal disruption of stars by intermediate-mass to supermassive black holes on bound to unbound orbits by using high-accuracy direct N-body experiments. The approaching stars from the star cluster to the black hole can take three types of orbit: eccentric, parabolic, and hyperbolic orbits. Since the mass fallback rate shows a different variability depending on these orbital types, we can classify tidal disruption events (TDEs) into three main categories: eccentric, parabolic, and hyperbolic TDEs. Respective TDEs are characterized by two critical values of the orbital eccentricity: the lower critical eccentricity is the one below which the stars on eccentric orbits cause the finite, intense accretion, and the higher critical eccentricity above which the stars on hyperbolic orbits cause no accretion. Moreover, we find that the parabolic TDEs are divided into three subclasses: precisely parabolic, marginally eccentric, and marginally hyperbolic TDEs. We analytically derive that the mass fallback rate of the marginally eccentric TDEs can be flatter and slightly higher than the standard fallback rate proportional to $t^{-5/3}$, whereas it can be flatter and lower for the marginally hyperbolic TDEs. We confirm by N-body experiments that only few eccentric, precisely parabolic, and hyperbolic TDEs can occur in a spherical stellar system with a single intermediate-mass to supermassive black hole. A substantial fraction of the stars approaching to the black hole would cause the marginally eccentric or marginally hyperbolic TDEs.
Gravitational waves can be emitted by accretion discs if they undergo instabilities that generate a time varying mass quadrupole. In this work we investigate the gravitational signal generated by a thick accretion disc of $1 M_{odot}$ around a static super-massive black hole of $10^{6}M_{odot}$, assumed to be formed after the tidal disruption of a solar type star. This torus has been shown to be unstable to a global non-axisymmetric hydrodynamic instability, the Papaloizou-Pringle instability, in the case where it is not already accreting and has a weak magnetic field. We start by deriving analytical estimates of the maximum amplitude of the gravitational wave signal, with the aim to establish its detectability by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Then, we compare these estimates with those obtained through a numerical simulation of the torus, made with a 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics code. Our numerical analysis shows that the measured strain is two orders of magnitude lower than the maximum value obtained analytically. However, accretion discs affected by the Papaloizou-Pringle instability may still be interesting sources for LISA, if we consider discs generated after deeply penetrating tidal disruptions of main sequence stars of higher mass.
The discovery of jets from tidal disruption events (TDEs) rejuvenated the old field of relativistic jets powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes. In this Chapter, we first review the extensive multi-wavelength observations of jetted TDEs. Then, we show that these events provide valuable information on many aspects of jet physics from a new prospective, including the on-and-off switch of jet launching, jet propagation through the ambient medium, $gamma/$X-ray radiation mechanism, jet composition, and the multi-messenger picture. Finally, open questions and future prospects in this field are summarized.
We propose a model to explain the time delay between the peak of the optical and X-ray luminosity, dt hereafter, in UV/optically-selected tidal disruption events (TDEs). The following picture explains the observed dt in several TDEs as a consequence of the circularization and disk accretion processes as long as the sub-Eddington accretion. At the beginning of the circularization, the fallback debris is thermalized by the self-crossing shock caused by relativistic precession, providing the peak optical emission. During the circularization process, the mass fallback rate decreases with time to form a ring around the supermassive black hole (SMBH). The formation timescale corresponds to the circularization timescale of the most tightly bound debris, which is less than a year to several decades, depending mostly on the penetration factor, the circularization efficiency, and the black hole mass. The ring will subsequently evolve viscously over the viscous diffusion time. We find that it accretes onto the SMBH on a fraction of the viscous timescale, which is $2$ years for given typical parameters, leading to X-ray emission at late times. The resultant dt,is given by the sum of the circularization timescale and the accretion timescale and significantly decreases with increasing penetration factor to several to $sim10$ years typically. Since the X-ray luminosity substantially decreases as the viewing angle between the normal to the disk plane and line-of-sight increases from $0^circ$ to $90^circ$, a low late-time X-ray luminosity can be explained by an edge-on view. We also discuss the super-Eddington accretion scenario, where dt,is dominated by the circularization timescale.