2020/09/30 by Tatsuya Matsumoto, Tsvi Piran
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Luminosity #Outflow #Photosphere #Physics #Spectral line #Supernova #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stab240
9 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2021/01/25 · openalex publication_date 2021/01/27 · arxiv updated 2021/02/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
ABSTRACT The discovery of optical/UV (ultraviolet) tidal disruption events (TDEs) was surprising. The expectation was that, upon returning to the pericentre, the stellar-debris stream will form a compact disc that will emit soft X-rays. Indeed, the first TDEs were discovered in this energy band. A common explanation for the optical/UV events is that surrounding optically thick matter reprocesses the disc’s X-ray emission and emits it from a large photosphere. If accretion follows the super-Eddington mass infall rate, it would inevitably result in an energetic outflow, providing naturally the reprocessing matter. We describe here a new method to estimate, using the observed luminosity and temperature, the mass and energy of outflows from optical transients. When applying this method to a sample of supernovae, our estimates are consistent with a more detailed hydrodynamic modelling. For the current sample of a few dozen optical TDEs, the observed luminosity and temperature imply outflows that are significantly more massive than typical stellar masses, posing a problem to this common reprocessing picture.