Pancake detonation of stars by black holes in galactic nuclei

Carter, B.; Luminet, Jean‐Pierre

doi:10.1038/296211a0

Cited by 190 publications

(240 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…-If the stellar orbit is deeply plunging, the squeezing of the star can be extreme. If nuclear burning is ignited during this process, this would result in a GRB-like explosion (e.g., Luminet & Marck 1985, Carter & Luminet 1982). -Part of the disrupted star will be on unbound trajectories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes: The X-ray view

Komossa

2012

EPJ Web of Conferences

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Abstract. The tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes produces luminous soft X-ray accretion flares in otherwise inactive galaxies. First events have been discovered in X-rays with the ROSAT observatory, and have more recently been detected with XMM-Newton, Chandra and Swift, and at other wavelengths. In X-rays, they typically appear as very soft, exceptionally luminous outbursts of radiation, which decline consistent with L ∝ t −5/3 on the timescale of months to years. They reach total amplitudes of decline up to factors 1000-6000 more than a decade after their initial high-states, and in low-state, their host galaxies are essentially X-ray inactive, optically inactive, and radio inactive. X-ray luminous tidal disruption events (TDEs) represent a powerful new probe of accretion physics near the event horizon, and of relativistic effects. TDEs offer a new way of estimating black hole spin, and they are signposts of supermassive binary black holes and recoiling black holes. Once discovered in the thousands in upcoming sky surveys, their rates will probe stellar dynamics in distant galaxies, and they will uncover theso far elusive -population of intermediate mass black holes in the universe, if they do exist. Further, the reprocessing of the flare into IR, optical and UV emission lines provides us with multiple new diagnostics of the properties of any gaseous material in the vicinity of the black hole (including the disrupted star itself) and in the host galaxy. First candidate events of this kind have been reported recently.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes: The X-ray view

Komossa

2012

EPJ Web of Conferences

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“…Since β ≪ 1, we have τ D ≪ τ K . It follows that the galaxy will remain close to the stationary equilibrium state determined by the instantaneous value of the tidal potential (Carter & Luminet 1983), where the equilibrium shape of the galaxy will coincide with the iso-potential surface of the equilibrium state Φ eff = Φ grav + Φ T . /r s is the dimensionless offset distance, where L 0 is the distance between the real mass center of the cluster and the reference center used in observation, ϕ is the angle between the direction of the projected elliptical galaxy's long axis and the vector pointing from the galaxy center to the reference center Lower panel: Definition of the coordinate system.…”

Section: Qualitative Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus for a rich cluster like A2744, the condition β ≪ 1 is satisfied for most galaxies, which means that the tidal force is weak compared with the self-gravity of these galaxies. Carter & Luminet (1983) calculated the response of a star under the tidal force which is weak compared with its self-gravity. Analogous to a star, a galaxy will have a trace-free quadrupole oscillation, with a frequency ω osc ≃ √ πGρ G .…”

Section: Qualitative Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In section 2, we assumed that a galaxy has a trace-free quadrupole oscillation under the weak tidal distorsion like a star (Carter & Luminet 1983) with a period τ osc ∼ 0.1 Gyr. However, an elliptical galaxy is a stellar system rather than a fluid system, and the oscillation can be quickly damped by Landau damping (Binney & Tremaine 1987;Weinberg 1994).…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Radial alignment of elliptical galaxies by the tidal force of a cluster of galaxies

Zhang

et al. 2015

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Unlike the random radial orientation distribution of field elliptical galaxies, galaxies in a cluster are expected to point preferentially towards the center of the cluster, as a result of the cluster's tidal force on its member galaxies. In this work an analytic model is formulated to simulate this effect. The deformation time scale of a galaxy in a cluster is usually much shorter than the time scale of change of the tidal force; the dynamical process of the tidal interaction within the galaxy can thus be ignored. An equilibrium shape of a galaxy is then assumed to be the surface of equipotential, which is the sum of the self-gravitational potential of the galaxy and the tidal potential of the cluster at this location. We use a Monte-Carlo method to calculate the radial orientation distribution of these galaxies, by assuming the NFW mass profile of the cluster and the initial ellipticity of field galaxies. The radial angles show a single peak distribution centered at zero. The Monte-Carlo simulations also show that a shift of the reference center from the real cluster center weakens the anisotropy of the radial angle distribution. Therefore, the expected radial alignment cannot be revealed if the distribution of spatial position angle is used instead of that of radial angle. The observed radial orientations of elliptical galaxies in cluster Abell 2744 are consistent with the simulated distribution.

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“…It has long been underlined that stars orbiting close enough to massive black holes could be tidally flattened into a transient pancake-shape configuration until full disruption (Carter & Luminet 1982. The strongest compressions have been predicted to trigger thermonuclear explosion in the core of small main-sequence stars that graze black holes from thousands up to millions of solar masses (Pichon 1985;Luminet & Pichon 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relativistic tidal compressions of a star by a massive black hole

Brassart

Luminet

2010

A&A

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Aims. We investigate the stellar pancake mechanism during which a solar-type star is tidally flattened within its orbital plane as it passes close to a 10 6 M black hole. Methods. We simulated the relativistic orthogonal compression process and follow the associated shock waves formation. We considered a one-dimensional hydrodynamical stellar model moving in the relativistic gravitational field of a non-rotating black hole. The model is numerically solved using a Godunov-type shock-capturing source-splitting method to correctly reproduce the shock wave profiles. Results. Simulations confirm that the space-time curvature can induce several successive orthogonal compressions of the star, which give rise to several strong shock waves. The shock waves finally escape from the star and repeatedly heat up the stellar surface to high-energy values. Such a shock-heating could interestingly provide a direct observational signature of strongly disruptive starblack hole encounters through the emission of hard X or soft γ-ray bursts. Timescales and energies of such a process are consistent with some observed events such as GRB 970815.

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Pancake detonation of stars by black holes in galactic nuclei

Cited by 190 publications

References 7 publications

Tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes: The X-ray view

Tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes: The X-ray view

Radial alignment of elliptical galaxies by the tidal force of a cluster of galaxies

Relativistic tidal compressions of a star by a massive black hole

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