Does Explosive Nuclear Burning occur in Tidal Disruption Events of White Dwarfs by Intermediate Mass Black Holes ?

Understand

We investigate nucleosynthesis in tidal disruption events (TDEs) of white dwarfs (WDs) by intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs).

• We consider various types of WDs with different masses and compositions by means of 3 dimensional (3D) smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations.
• We model these WDs with different numbers of SPH particles, $N$, from a few $10^4$ to a few $10^7$, in order to check mass resolution convergence, where SPH simulations with $N>10^7$ (or a space resolution of several $10^6$ cm) have unprecedentedly high resolution in this kind of simulations.
• We find that nuclear reactions become less active with increasing $N$, and that these nuclear reactions are excited by spurious heating due to low resolution.