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An unfortunate star in the nucleus of a galaxy can find itself on an orbit that intersects the tidal radius of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH), $R_t\approx R_*(M_\bullet/M_*)^{1/3}$ for a black hole of mass $M_\bullet$ and a star of mass $M_*$ and radius $R_*$ [@Hills1975]. This encounter induces a spread in the specific orbital binding energy across the star that is orders of magnitude greater than the mean binding energy [@Rees1988], sufficient to tear the star apart in a ‘tidal disruption event’ (TDE). The stellar debris, confined in the vertical direction by self-gravity [@Kochanek1994; @Guillochon2014], is stretched into a long, thin stream, roughly half of which remains bound to the SMBH [@Rees1988]. As the bound debris orbits the SMBH, relativistic apsidal precession causes the stream to self-intersect and dissipate energy.

This destruction can power a very luminous flare, up to or exceeding the Eddington luminosity, either when the intersecting streams circularise and form an accretion disk [@Rees1988; @Phinney1989], or even earlier if comparable radiation is produced directly from the stream collisions [@Piran2015; @Jiang2016]. Such flares are now regularly discovered, at a rate exceeding a few per year, by the various wide-field time-domain surveys.

Observed TDEs are bright in 