Ultra-Close Tidal Disruption Events with Prompt Hyperaccretion
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A bright flare from a galactic nucleus followed at late times by a t^-5/3 decay in luminosity is often considered to be the signature of a tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole. The flare and afterglow are produced when the stream of stellar debris released by the disruption returns to the vicinity of the black hole, self-intersects, and eventually forms an accretion disk or torus. In the canonical scenario of a solar-type star disrupted by a 10^6 solar mass black hole, the time between the disruption of the star and the formation of the accretion torus could be years. Presented here are fully general relativistic simulations of a new class of tidal disruption events involving ultra-close encounters of solar-type stars with intermediate mass black holes. In these encounters, a thick disk forms promptly after disruption, on timescales of hours. After a brief initial flare, the accretion rate remains steady and highly super-Eddington for a few days at approximately 100 solar masses per year.