The disruption of stars by super-massive black holes has been linked to more than a dozen flares in the cores of galaxies out to redshift z ~ 0.4. Modeling these flares properly requires a prediction ...of the rate of mass return to the black hole after a disruption. As the precipitous decay rates are only seen for events in which a stellar core survives the disruption, they can be used to determine if an observed tidal disruption flare produced a surviving remnant. We provide fitting formulae for four fundamental quantities of tidal disruption as functions of the star's distance to the black hole at pericenter and its stellar structure: the total mass lost, the time of peak, the accretion rate at peak, and the power-law index shortly after peak. These results should be taken into consideration when flares arising from tidal disruptions are modeled.
We perform a comprehensive study of the X-ray emission from 70 transient sources that have been classified as tidal disruption events (TDEs) in the literature. We explore the properties of these ...candidates, using nearly three decades of X-ray observations to quantify their properties and characteristics. We find that the emission from X-ray TDEs increase by two to three orders of magnitude, compared to pre-flare constraints. These emissions evolve significantly with time, and decay with power-law indices that are typically shallower than the canonical t−5/3 decay law, implying that X-ray TDEs are viscously delayed. These events exhibit enhanced (relative to galactic) column densities and are quite soft in nature, with no strong correlation between the amount of detected soft and hard emission. At their peak, jetted events have an X-ray to optical ratio >1, whereas non-jetted events have a ratio ∼1, which suggests that these events undergo reprocessing at different rates. X-ray TDEs have long T90 values, consistent with what would be expected from a viscously driven accretion disk formed by the disruption of a main-sequence star by a black hole with a mass <107 M . The isotropic luminosities of X-ray TDEs are bimodal, such that jetted and non-jetted events are separated by a "reprocessing valley" that we suggest is naturally populated by optical/UV TDEs that most likely produce X-rays, but this emission is "veiled" from observations due to reprocessing. Our results suggest that non-jetted X-ray TDEs likely originate from partial disruptions and/or disruptions of low-mass stars.
An Open Catalog for Supernova Data Guillochon, James; Parrent, Jerod; Kelley, Luke Zoltan ...
The Astrophysical journal,
01/2017, Letnik:
835, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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We present the Open Supernova Catalog, an online collection of observations and metadata for presently 36,000+ supernovae and related candidates. The catalog is freely available on the web ...(https://sne.space), with its main interface having been designed to be a user-friendly, rapidly searchable table accessible on desktop and mobile devices. In addition to the primary catalog table containing supernova metadata, an individual page is generated for each supernova, which displays its available metadata, light curves, and spectra spanning X-ray to radio frequencies. The data presented in the catalog is automatically rebuilt on a daily basis and is constructed by parsing several dozen sources, including the data presented in the supernova literature and from secondary sources such as other web-based catalogs. Individual supernova data is stored in the hierarchical, human- and machine-readable JSON format, with the entirety of each supernova's data being contained within a single JSON file bearing its name. The setup we present here, which is based on open-source software maintained via git repositories hosted on github, enables anyone to download the entirety of the supernova data set to their home computer in minutes, and to make contributions of their own data back to the catalog via git. As the supernova data set continues to grow, especially in the upcoming era of all-sky synoptic telescopes, which will increase the total number of events by orders of magnitude, we hope that the catalog we have designed will be a valuable tool for the community to analyze both historical and contemporary supernovae.
ABSTRACT We study the emission from tidal disruption events (TDEs) produced as radiation from black hole accretion propagates through an extended, optically thick envelope formed from stellar debris. ...We analytically describe key physics controlling spectrum formation, and present detailed radiative transfer calculations that model the spectral energy distribution and optical line strengths of TDEs near peak brightness. The steady-state transfer is coupled to a solver for the excitation and ionization states of hydrogen, helium, and oxygen (as a representative metal), without assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium. Our calculations show how an extended envelope can reprocess a fraction of soft X-rays and produce the observed optical fluxes of the order of 1043 erg s−1, with an optical/UV continuum that is not described by a single blackbody. Variations in the mass or size of the envelope may help explain how the optical flux changes over time with roughly constant color. For high enough accretion luminosities, X-rays can escape to be observed simultaneously with the optical flux. Due to optical depth effects, hydrogen Balmer line emission is often strongly suppressed relative to helium line emission (with He ii-to-H line ratios of at least 5:1 in some cases) even in the disruption of a solar-composition star. We discuss the implications of our results to understanding the type of stars destroyed in TDEs and the physical processes responsible for producing the observed flares.
We present the first simulations of the tidal disruption of stars with realistic structures and compositions by massive black holes (BHs). We build stars in the stellar evolution code MESA and ...simulate their disruption in the 3D adaptive-mesh hydrodynamics code FLASH, using an extended Helmholtz equation of state and tracking 49 elements. We study the disruption of a 1M star and 3M star at zero-age main sequence (ZAMS), middle-age, and terminal-age main sequence (TAMS). The maximum BH mass for tidal disruption increases by a factor of ∼2 from stellar radius changes due to main-sequence (MS) evolution; this is equivalent to varying BH spin from 0 to 0.75. The shape of the mass fallback rate curves is different from the results for polytropes of Guillochon & Ramirez-Ruiz. The peak timescale tpeak increases with stellar age, while the peak fallback rate decreases with age, and these effects diminish with increasing impact parameter β. For a β = 1 disruption of a 1M star by a 106 M BH, from ZAMS to TAMS, tpeak increases from 30 to 54 days, while decreases from 0.66 to 0.14 M yr−1. Compositional anomalies in nitrogen, helium, and carbon can occur before the peak timescale for disruptions of MS stars, which is in contrast to predictions from the "frozen-in" model. More massive stars can show stronger anomalies at earlier times, meaning that compositional constraints can be key in determining the mass of the disrupted star. The abundance anomalies predicted by these simulations provide a natural explanation for the spectral features and varying line strengths observed in tidal disruption events.
The discovery of Jupiter-mass planets in close orbits about their parent stars has challenged models of planet formation. Recent observations have shown that a number of these planets have highly ...inclined, sometimes retrograde orbits about their parent stars, prompting much speculation as to their origin. It is known that migration alone cannot account for the observed population of these misaligned hot Jupiters, which suggests that dynamical processes after the gas disk dissipates play a substantial role in yielding the observed inclination and eccentricity distributions. One particularly promising candidate is planet-planet scattering, which is not very well understood in the nonlinear regime of tides. Through three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of multi-orbit encounters, we show that planets that are scattered into an orbit about their parent stars with closest approach distance being less than approximately three times the tidal radius are either destroyed or completely ejected from the system. We find that as few as 9 and as many as 12 of the currently known hot Jupiters have a maximum initial apastron for scattering that lies well within the ice line, implying that these planets must have migrated either before or after the scattering event that brought them to their current positions. If stellar tides are unimportant (Q * 107), disk migration is required to explain the existence of the hot Jupiters present in these systems. Additionally, we find that the disruption and/or ejection of Jupiter-mass planets deposits a Sun's worth of angular momentum onto the host star. For systems in which planet-planet scattering is common, we predict that planetary hosts have up to a 35% chance of possessing an obliquity relative to the invariable plane of greater than 90?.
The energy liberated by fallback accretion has been suggested as a possible engine to power hydrogen-poor superluminous supernovae (SLSNe). We systematically investigate this model using the Bayesian ...light curve (LC) fitting code MOSFiT (Modular Open Source Fitter for Transients), fitting the LCs of 37 hydrogen-poor SLSNe assuming a fallback accretion central engine. We find that this model can yield good fits to their LCs, with a fit quality that rivals the popular magnetar engine models. Examining our derived parameters for the fallback model, we estimate the total energy requirements from the accretion disk to be 0.002-0.7 c2. If we adopt a typical conversion efficiency ∼10−3, the required mass to accrete is thus 2-700 . Many SLSNe, therefore, require an unrealistic accretion mass, and so only a fraction of these events could be powered by fallback accretion unless the true efficiency is much greater than our fiducial value. The SLSNe that require the smallest amounts of fallback mass are still fallback accretion-powered supernova candidates, but they are difficult to distinguish solely by their LC properties.
The duration-luminosity phase space (DLPS) of optical transients is used, mostly heuristically, to compare various classes of transient events, to explore the origin of new transients, and to ...influence optical survey observing strategies. For example, several observational searches have been guided by intriguing voids and gaps in this phase space. However, we should ask, do we expect to find transients in these voids given our understanding of the various heating sources operating in astrophysical transients? In this work, we explore a broad range of theoretical models and empirical relations to generate optical light curves and to populate the DLPS. We explore transients powered by adiabatic expansion, radioactive decay, magnetar spin-down, and circumstellar interaction. For each heating source, we provide a concise summary of the basic physical processes, a physically motivated choice of model parameter ranges, an overall summary of the resulting light curves and their occupied range in the DLPS, and how the various model input parameters affect the light curves. We specifically explore the key voids discussed in the literature: the intermediate-luminosity gap between classical novae and supernovae, and short-duration transients ( days). We find that few physical models lead to transients that occupy these voids. Moreover, we find that only relativistic expansion can produce fast and luminous transients, while for all other heating sources events with durations days are dim ( mag). Finally, we explore the detection potential of optical surveys (e.g., Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) in the DLPS and quantify the notion that short-duration and dim transients are exponentially more difficult to discover in untargeted surveys.
ABSTRACT Stream-stream collisions play an important role in the circularization of highly eccentric streams that result from tidal disruption events (TDEs). We perform three-dimensional radiation ...hydrodynamic simulations to show that stream collisions can contribute significant optical and ultraviolet light to the flares produced by TDEs, and can explain the majority of the observed emission. Our simulations focus on the region near the radiation-pressure-dominated shock produced by a collision and track how the kinetic energy of the stream is dissipated by the associated shock. When the mass flow rate of the stream is a significant fraction of the Eddington accretion rate, 2% of the initial kinetic energy is converted to radiation as a result of the collision. In this regime, the collision redistributes the specific kinetic energy into the downstream gas and more than 16% of the mass can become unbound. The fraction of unbound gas decreases rapidly as drops significantly below the Eddington limit, with no unbound gas being produced when drops to 1% of Eddington; we find, however, that the radiative efficiency increases slightly to 8% in these cases of low . The effective radiation temperature and size of the photosphere are determined by the stream velocity and , and we find them to be a few times 104 K and 1014 cm in our calculations, comparable to the values inferred for some TDE candidates. The size of the photosphere is directly proportional to , which can explain its rapidly changing size as seen in TDE candidates such as PS1-10jh.
MOSFiT: Modular Open Source Fitter for Transients Guillochon, James; Nicholl, Matt; Villar, V. Ashley ...
The Astrophysical journal. Supplement series,
05/2018, Letnik:
236, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Much of the progress made in time-domain astronomy is accomplished by relating observational multiwavelength time-series data to models derived from our understanding of physical laws. This goal is ...typically accomplished by dividing the task in two: collecting data (observing), and constructing models to represent that data (theorizing). Owing to the natural tendency for specialization, a disconnect can develop between the best available theories and the best available data, potentially delaying advances in our understanding new classes of transients. We introduce MOSFiT: the Modular Open Source Fitter for Transients, a Python-based package that downloads transient data sets from open online catalogs (e.g., the Open Supernova Catalog), generates Monte Carlo ensembles of semi-analytical light-curve fits to those data sets and their associated Bayesian parameter posteriors, and optionally delivers the fitting results back to those same catalogs to make them available to the rest of the community. MOSFiT is designed to help bridge the gap between observations and theory in time-domain astronomy; in addition to making the application of existing models and creation of new models as simple as possible, MOSFiT yields statistically robust predictions for transient characteristics, with a standard output format that includes all the setup information necessary to reproduce a given result. As large-scale surveys such as that conducted with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), discover entirely new classes of transients, tools such as MOSFiT will be critical for enabling rapid comparison of models against data in statistically consistent, reproducible, and scientifically beneficial ways.
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