Tidal disruption event

A tidal disruption event (TDE) is a transient astronomical source produced when a star passes so close to a supermassive black hole (SMBH) that it is pulled apart by the black hole's tidal force.

[2][3] The star undergoes spaghettification, producing a tidal stream of material that loops around the black hole.

Some portion of the stellar material is captured into orbit, forming an accretion disk around the black hole, which emits electromagnetic radiation.

As the material in the disk is gradually consumed by the black hole, the TDE fades over several months or years.

Over a hundred have since been observed, with detections at optical, infrared, radio and X-ray wavelengths.

Sometimes a star can survive the encounter with an SMBH, leaving a remnant; those events are termed partial TDEs.

studies, tidal disruption events are an inevitable consequence of massive black holes' activity hidden in galaxy nuclei.

Later theorists concluded that the resulting explosion or flare of radiation from the accretion of the stellar debris could reveal the presence of a dormant black hole in the center of a normal galaxy.

[8] TDEs were first observed in the early 1990s using the X-ray ROSAT All-Sky Survey.

[citation needed] As of May 2024[update], roughly 100 TDEs are known,[9][10][11] and have been discovered through several astronomical methods.

[14] The light curves of TDEs have an initially sharp rise in brightness, as the disrupted stellar material falls towards the black hole, followed by a more gradual decline lasting months or years.

The peak luminosity of TDEs is proportional to the central black hole mass; it can approach or exceed that of their host galaxies, making them some of the brightest sources observed in the Universe.

The majority of TDEs consist of "non-relativistic" events, where the outflows from the TDE are akin to the energetics seen in Type Ib and Ic supernovae.

is called the tidal radius and is given approximately by:[21][22] This is identical to the Roche limit for disruptions of planetary bodies.