Lessons on Super-Eddington Accretion Learnt from Tidal Disruption Events

by Jane Dai (Neils Bohr Institute)

Tuesday 15 Jan 2019, 13:15 → 14:00 Europe/Stockholm

FC61

In a tidal disruption event (TDE), a star approaches very close to a supermassive black hole and is therefore torn apart by the overpowering tidal force. Stellar debris is then fed to the black hole at a rate largely exceeding the Eddington accretion rate. Therefore, TDEs provide a unique opportunity for studying black hole super-Eddington accretion in the local universe. In this talk, I will first give a review of TDE theory and multi-wavelength observations. Then I will talk about the results of our general-relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations of TDE super-Eddington disks. Winds and relativistic jets are launched from the radiation-pressure dominated thick disks. The total luminosity can exceed the Eddington luminosity. The emission produced from the inner disk is heavily reprocessed in the winds, and the observed flux and spectral energy distribution sensitively depend on the viewing angle of the observer. I will show how this model can solve some puzzles posed by latest TDE observations.