Astronomy Colloquium: “Tidal disruptions of stars – from simulations to observations with Rubin Observatory LSST”

Feb

03

Thursday

3:30 PM

Zoom Meeting

A colloquium speaker this week is Dr. Andreja Gomboc from the University of Nova Gorica

The colloquium is hybrid and will have the option to attend both in-person and virtually. It will start at 3:30pm PT in PAA A102. Refreshments will be served at 3:15pm.

Zoom: https://washington.zoom.us/j/91838346429
Meeting ID: 918 3834 6429

Title: “Tidal disruptions of stars – from simulations to observations with Rubin Observatory LSST”

Abstract: Tidal disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes were proposed in the 1970s as a possible way of fuelling active galactic nuclei. Following further studies showing that this mechanism can not supply quasar-level fuelling rates, it was realized that bright flares produced by disruptions could be used as probes for exploring otherwise quiescent galactic centers.

In the last decade the study of Tidal Disruptions Events (TDEs) gained momentum from advanced numerical simulations on the theoretical side and from detections of dozens of TDEs by wide-field sky surveys on the observational side.
I will review the theoretical picture of TDEs, main mechanisms and parameters affecting the outcome of a stellar encounter with a black hole, and their observed characteristics. I will address main open questions stemming from simulations and observations, and the prospects of Rubin Observatory LSST in discovering TDEs, significantly enlarging their sample, and probing the supermassive black hole mass distribution with them.