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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Adam IngramORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
We present fundamental scaling relationships between properties of the optical/UV light curves of tidal disruption events (TDEs) and the mass of the black hole that disrupted the star. We have uncovered these relations from the late-time emission of TDEs. Using a sample of 63 optically selected TDEs, the latest catalogue to date, we observed flattening of the early-time emission into a near-constant late-time plateau for at least two-thirds of our sources. Compared to other properties of the TDE light curves (e.g. peak luminosity or decay rate) the plateau luminosity shows the tightest correlation with the total mass of host galaxy (p-value of 2 × 10^−6, with a residual scatter of 0.3 dex). Physically this plateau stems from the presence of an accretion flow. We demonstrate theoretically and numerically that the amplitude of this plateau emission is strongly correlated with black hole mass. By simulating a large population (N = 106) of TDEs, we determine a plateau luminosity-black hole mass scaling relationship well described by log10 (M•/M) = 1.50 log10 Lplat/1043 erg s−1+ 9.0 (here Lplat is measured at 6 × 10^14 Hz in the rest frame). The observed plateau luminosities of TDEs and black hole masses in our large sample are in excellent agreement with this simulation. Using the black hole mass predicted from the observed TDE plateau luminosity, we reproduce the well-known scaling relations between black hole mass and galaxy velocity dispersion. The large black hole masses of 10 of the TDEs in our sample allow us to provide constraints on their black hole spins, favouring rapidly rotating black holes. Finally, we also discover two significant correlations between early time properties of optical TDE light curves (the g-band peak luminosity and radiated energy) and the TDEs black hole mass.
Author(s): Mummery A, van Velzen S, Nathan E, Ingram A, Hammerstein E, Fraser-Taliente L, Balbus S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Year: 2024
Volume: 527
Issue: 2
Pages: 2452-2489
Print publication date: 01/01/2024
Online publication date: 05/10/2024
Acceptance date: 28/09/2024
Date deposited: 06/12/2024
ISSN (print): 0035-8711
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2966
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3001
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad3001
Data Access Statement: All TDE light curves are available in the following repository https://github.com/sjoertvv/manyTDE, including the inferred model parameters in Table E1.
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