Simulating realistic disc formation in tidal disruption events

Understand

A star coming too close to a supermassive black hole gets disrupted by the tidal force of the compact object in a tidal disruption event, or TDE.

• Following this encounter, the debris evolves into an elongated stream, half of which coming back to pericenter.
• Relativistic apsidal precession then leads to a self-crossing shock that initiates the formation of an accretion disc.
• We perform the first simulation of this process considering a realistic stellar trajectory and black hole mass, which has so far eluded investigations for computational reasons.