Forward Modeling Populations of Flares from Tidal Disruptions of Stars by Super-massive Black Holes

Understand

Detections of the tidal disruption flares (TDFs) of stars by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are rapidly accumulating as optical surveys improve.

• These detections may provide constraints on SMBH demographics, stellar dynamics, and stellar evolution in galaxies.
• To maximize this scientific impact, we require a better understanding of how astrophysical parameters interact with survey selection effects in setting the properties of detected flares.
• We develop a framework for modeling the distributions of optical TDF detections in surveys across attributes of the host galaxies and the flares themselves.