Related papers: The Effect of General Relativistic Precession on T…
We identify a new secular instability of eccentric stellar disks around supermassive black holes. We show that retrograde precession of the stellar orbits, due to the presence of a stellar cusp, induces coherent torques that amplify…
A tidal disruption event (TDE) ensues when a star passes too close to the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a galactic center and is ripped apart by the tidal field of the SMBH. The gaseous debris produced in a TDE can power a bright…
We present the results of relativistic smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of tidal disruptions of stars by rotating supermassive black holes, for a wide range of impact parameters and black hole spins. For deep encounters, we find…
The M31 nucleus contains a supermassive black hole embedded in a massive stellar disk of apsidally-aligned eccentric orbits. It has recently been shown that this disk is slowly precessing at a rate consistent with zero. Here we demonstrate…
We study the probability of close encounters between stars from a nuclear cluster and a massive black hole. The gravitational field of the system is dominated by the black hole in its sphere of influence. It is further modified by the…
Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are routinely observed in quiescent galaxies, as stars from the nuclear star cluster are scattered into the loss cone of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). TDEs are also expected to occur in Active…
The tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole, and the subsequent accretion of the disrupted debris by that black hole, offers a direct means to study the inner regions of otherwise-quiescent galaxies. These tidal disruption…
Recent hydrodynamical simulations have shown that circumbinary gas disks drive the orbits of binary black holes to become eccentric, even when general relativistic corrections to the orbit are significant. Here, we study the general…
Models for tidal disruption events (TDEs) in which a supermassive black hole disrupts a star commonly assume that the highly eccentric streams of bound stellar debris promptly form a circular accretion disk at the pericenter scale. However,…
We review some of the interesting consequences that tilts, warps, and eccentricities can introduce into the dynamics, thermodynamics, and observational appearance of accreting systems, with an emphasis on disks around black holes and…
The disruption of a star by the tidal forces of a spinning black hole causes the stellar stream to precess affecting the conditions for triggering the tidal disruption event (TDE). In this work, we study the effect that precession imprints…
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…
Accretion of debris seems to be the natural mechanism to power the radiation emitted during a tidal disruption event (TDE), in which a supermassive black hole tears apart a star. However, this requires the prompt formation of a compact…
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are valuable probes of the demographics of supermassive black holes as well as the dynamics and population of stars in the centers of galaxies. In this Letter, we focus on studying how the debris disk…
A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star passes within the tidal radius of a supermassive black hole (SMBH). In TDEs it is expected that the orbital angular momentum of the disrupted star is generally misaligned with the SMBH spin…
The tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole (MBH) is thought to produce a transient luminous event. Such tidal disruption events (TDEs) may play an important role in the detection and characterization of MBHs and probe the…
An accretion disk formed around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) after it disrupts a star is expected to be initially misaligned with respect to the black hole's equatorial plane. This misalignment induces relativistic torques (the…
Whether tidal disruption events (TDEs) circularise or accrete directly as a highly eccentric disc is the subject of current research and appears to depend sensitively on the disc thermodynamics. In a previous paper we applied the theory of…
When a star is torn apart by the tidal forces of a supermassive black hole (a so-called TDE) a transient accretion episode is initiated and a hot, often X-ray bright, accretion disk is formed. Like any accretion flow this disk is turbulent,…
A star coming too close to a supermassive black hole gets disrupted by the tidal force of the compact object in a tidal disruption event, or TDE. Following this encounter, the debris evolves into an elongated stream, half of which coming…