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On Post-Starburst Galaxies Dominating Tidal Disruption Events

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-12-11 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

A starburst induced by a galaxy merger may create a relatively thin central stellar disk at radius 100\le 100pc. We calculate the rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) by the inspiraling secondary supermassive black (SMBH) through the disk. With a small enough stellar velocity dispersion (σ/vc0.1\sigma/v_c \le 0.1) in the disk, it is shown that 10510610^5-10^6 TDEs of solar-type main sequence stars per post-starburst galaxy (PSB) can be produced to explain their dominance in producing observed TDEs. Although the time it takes to bring the secondary SMBH to the disk apparently varies in the range of 0.11\sim 0.1-1Gyr since the starburst, depending on its landing location and subsequently due to dynamical friction with stars exterior to the central stellar disk in question, the vast majority of TDEs by the secondary SMBH in any individual PSB occurs within a space of time shorter than 30\sim 30Myr. Five unique testable predictions of this model are suggested.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.04372,
  title  = {On Post-Starburst Galaxies Dominating Tidal Disruption Events},
  author = {Renyue Cen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.04372},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

21 pages, 4 figures, to appear in ApJ Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:40:42.177Z