Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Colloquium

Monday, March 08, 2021 at 16:10

https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/96981439846

Jane Dai, University of Hong Kong

"Tidal Disruption Events As Probes of Black Hole Accretion Physics And Demographics"

A Pretty Image from the Talk

Abstract:

Special time 4:10pm The tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole provides a unique opportunity for us to study the accretion and jet physics around black holes, especially in the super-Eddington accretion regime as well as during the transition from super- Eddington to sub-Eddington regime. Tidal disruption events can also allow us to probe the demographics of quiescent supermassive black holes. In this talk, I will present our general-relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic simulations of super-Eddington accretion disks, and show how we can use these results to understand the evolution of disks, winds, jets and emissions in TDEs. I will also talk about how we combine these disk simulations and general relativistic ray-tracing calculations to study the X- ray reflection and reverberation signals produced from super- Eddington accretion flow formed in TDEs. Last but not least, I will show our latest calculations of how the observed rates of TDEs relate to the debris disk formation process, which can crucially affect the black hole demographics constrained from TDEs.

 

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