Tidal Disruption Event Host Galaxies in the Context of the Local Galaxy Population

Understand

We study the properties of tidal disruption event (TDE) host galaxies in the context of a catalog of ~500,000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

• We explore whether selection effects can account for the overrepresentation of TDEs in E+A/post-starburst galaxies by creating matched galaxy samples.
• Accounting for possible selection effects due to black hole (BH) mass, redshift completeness, strong AGN presence, bulge colors, and surface brightness can reduce the apparent overrepresentation of TDEs in E+A host galaxies by a factor of ~4 (from ~$\times$100-190 to ~$\times$25-48), but cannot fully explain the preference.
• We find that TDE host galaxies have atypical photometric properties compared to similar, "typical" galaxies.