Tidal disruption events in active galactic nuclei

Understand

A fraction of tidal disruption events (TDEs) occur in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) whose black holes possess accretion disks; these TDEs can be confused with common AGN flares.

• The disruption itself is unaffected by the disk, but the evolution of the bound debris stream is modified by its collision with the disk when it returns to pericenter.
• The outcome of the collision is largely determined by the ratio of the stream mass current to the azimuthal mass current of the disk rotating underneath the stream footprint, which in turn depends on the mass and luminosity of the AGN.
• To characterize TDEs in AGNs, we simulated a suite of stream--disk collisions with various mass current ratios.