Tidal Disruption of a Main-Sequence Star by an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole: A Bright Decade

Understand

There has been suggestive evidence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs; 10^{3-5} M_sun) existing in some globular clusters (GCs) and dwarf galaxies, but IMBHs as a population remain elusive.

• As a main-sequence star passes too close by an IMBH it might be tidally captured and disrupted.
• We study the long-term accretion and observational consequence of such tidal disruption events.
• The disruption radius is hundreds to thousands of the BH's Schwarzschild radius, so the circularization of the falling-back debris stream is very inefficient due to weak general relativity effects.