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Star-Disk Collisions: Implications for Quasi-periodic Eruptions and Other Transients Near Supermassive Black Holes

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arxiv 2407.14578 v2 pith:ZZLEFEGB submitted 2024-07-19 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.SR

Philippe Z. Yao , Eliot Quataert , Yan-Fei Jiang , Wenbin Lu , Christopher J. White This is my paper · ORCID
classification astro-ph.HEastro-ph.SR
keywords collisionsstellarqpesdebristimingcollisionmass-lossobserved
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We use Athena++ to study the hydrodynamics of repeated star-accretion disk collisions close to supermassive black holes, and discuss their implications for the origin of quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) and other repeating nuclear transients. We quantify the impact of the collisions on the stellar structure, the amount of stripped stellar debris, and the debris' orbital properties. We provide simple fitting functions for the stellar mass-loss per collision; the mass-loss is much larger after repeated collisions due to the dilute stellar atmosphere shock-heated in earlier collisions. The lifetime of the QPE-emitting phase set by stellar mass-loss in star-disk collision models for QPEs is thus at most ~1000 years; it is shortest for eRO-QPE2, of order a few decades. The mass of the stripped stellar debris per collision and its orbital properties imply that currently observed QPEs are not powered by direct star-disk collisions but rather by collisions between the stellar debris liberated in previous collisions and the accretion disk (`circularization shocks'). We discuss how the hydrodynamics of this interaction can explain the diverse timing properties of QPEs including the regular timing of GSN 069 and eRO-QPE2 and the large flare-to-flare timing variations observed in eRO-QPE1. QPEs with recurrence times of many days, if observed, may have more regular timing.

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Forward citations

Cited by 8 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Triple radio flares from tidal disruption events: jet-wind collisions and the discovery of a third radio flare from AT2020vwl

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    The TDE AT2020vwl showed a third radio flare at the time a jet-wind collision was predicted from its first two flares, the first predicted-and-confirmed third flare.

  2. Collisions with tidal disruption event disks: implications for quasi-periodic X-ray eruptions

    astro-ph.HE 2025-04 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Tidal disruption event disks conserve the disrupted star's angular momentum, forcing disk mass to fall as R_out^{-1/2}, which rules out stellar-surface and black-hole collision models for QPEs and leaves only an exten...

  3. The properties of GSN 069 accretion disk from a joint X-ray and UV spectral analysis: stress-testing quasi-periodic eruption models

    astro-ph.HE 2025-01 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A self-consistent X-ray plus UV analysis of GSN 069 finds a compact, viscously expanding TDE disk whose inferred properties in 2014 and 2018 challenge both disk-instability and orbiter-collision models of quasi-period...

  4. Perturbing AGN Accretion Disks with Stars and Moderately Massive Black Holes: Implications for Changing-Look AGN and Quasi-Periodic Eruptions

    astro-ph.HE 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Spiral waves driven by an eccentric companion crossing an AGN disk produce accretion flares that can explain changing-look AGN with black hole perturbers and quasi-periodic eruptions with stellar perturbers.

  5. Black hole-accretion disk collision in general relativity: Axisymmetric simulations

    astro-ph.HE 2025-04 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Black hole-disk collisions eject less mass than earlier models, with flare luminosity near the Eddington limit, while sustained super-Eddington accretion onto the black hole lasts for about a million Schwarzschild tim...

  6. Time-resolved Hubble Space Telescope UV observations of an X-ray quasi-periodic eruption source

    astro-ph.HE 2025-01 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Time-resolved HST far-UV observations of the QPE source eRO-QPE2 reveal a steady bright FUV point source consistent with a compact TDE-like accretion disk, ruling out classic AGN-disk and no-disk interpretations.

  7. Secular evolution of quasi-periodic eruptions

    astro-ph.HE 2024-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The authors find strong Bayesian evidence for orbital decay in the QPE source GSN 069 and report a likely T ~ M^0.8 scaling among low-eccentricity QPE sources.

  8. Eppur si muove: Evidence of disc precession or a sub-milliparsec SMBH binary in the QPE-emitting galaxy GSN 069

    astro-ph.HE 2024-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The QPE timing in GSN 069 shows a correlated ~19 or ~44 day modulation that requires an external driver, either disc precession or a sub-milliparsec SMBH binary.

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