Colloquium by Eric Coughlin, Syracuse
The destruction of a star by the gravitational field of a supermassive black hole, known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), ignites a luminous electromagnetic flare that -- in the classic theoretical model -- rises, peaks, and monotonically decays in brightness over week timescales. Recent observational advances have enabled the detection of many such events, and accompanying this larger sample has been the discovery of TDE "oddities" that do not conform to this standard model. Within this odd-TDE subset are 5-10 events that repeat, such that the first TDE flare is followed by at least one more (often months to years later) that is comparable in brightness to the first. I will describe recent theoretical advances in our understanding of the origin of such repeating systems, and how they could be explained by the repeated partial stripping of a star on a bound orbit about a supermassive black hole.
Cookies will be available, starting at 3:45.
Host: Kishalay De