Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter Relativistic   (MW-2050)

Establishing the role of relativistic precession on tidal disruption events

Diego Calderón
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

The tidal field of a black hole can turn a star into a gas stream whose orbit can precess, especially if the a black hole is rapidly spinning. In this work, we investigate the impact of precession on both light curves and mass fallback rates of tidal disruption events (TDE). To do so, we perform two-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the interaction of the TDE wind and luminosity with the precessed stream wrapped around the black hole. Our results show that in events with black holes of ~10^6 Msun and no orbit-spin inclination, the line of sight has little effect on the light curves, since the stream covers a small fraction of the solid angle as the precession is confined to the orbital plane. In the case of black holes of >10^7 Msun and high inclination (i ~ 90º), the light curve peaks can be delayed by ~100 days due to presence of the precessed stream blocking the radiation in the early phase of the event. Additionally, we present our new tool for performing hydrodynamic modelling of stellar disruptions in Kerr spacetime. We discuss the results of our first set of simulations of tidal disruptions with (non-)spinning black holes studying the impact of the depth on the mass fallback rates.