Collaborative Research: Connecting Models to Observations of Tidal Disruption Events

超大质量黑洞（SMBH）对恒星的破坏和随后的吸积与在附近星系核中观察到的许多发光耀斑有关。然而，我们对这些潮汐破坏事件（TDEs）的理论理解仍然是不完整的。加州圣克鲁斯大学、加州伯克利大学和西北大学之间的一项研究合作将汇集不同物理学领域的专家：流体力学、一般相对论和辐射转移，以解决我们对TDE理解的重要差距。这种理解需要多管齐下的方法，试图在广泛的物理和时间尺度上解决潜在的物理问题。TDEs的现象提供了一个令人兴奋的机会，研究在静止星系中的SMBHs的大小，星系核中的恒星种群和动力学，以及在定义明确的条件下黑洞吸积的物理。虽然活动星系核可以由稳定的燃料流提供数千年，但TDE提供了一个独特的机会来研究单个SMBH，当质量吸积率和喂养时间尺度在几天或几个月内变化时。 该项目还将包括一个教育和公共宣传计划，旨在交叉培养计算科学家和学生在视觉艺术和数字媒体方面的培训，使用最先进的模拟作为群体环境中的共同点，显着增加在计算天体物理学方面接受培训的代表性不足的学生人数。 为此，天文学家将与大学艺术和教育项目以及当地学校合作。宽场瞬态调查目前正在提供更多和更好的关于TDE的数据。 吸积盘的全三维模拟在计算上是昂贵的，并且因此在运行具有仅解析盘的一小部分的显著分辨率的模拟与解析整个结构的中等分辨率的全局模拟之间存在权衡。对于TDE，权衡更为明显，需要同时解决大范围的尺度。因此，对包含所有上述效应的完整问题进行单一模拟不仅令人望而却步，而且由于不同尺度下各种物理机制之间相互作用的复杂性而难以解释。作为替代方案，研究人员将通过一系列数值实验来回答这些问题，这些实验将分离出调节破坏本身的关键过程，碎片盘的形成，喷流的产生和放射性辐射的产生。除了计算上可行，这种方法将使每个过程的透彻理解，这可能是非常令人想起的研究良好的现象学的adverly-accepting AGN。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The disruption and subsequent accretion of stars by super-massive black holes (SMBHs) has been linked to many luminous flares observed in the nuclei of nearby galaxies. Our theoretical understanding of these tidal disruption events (TDEs), however, remains incomplete. A research collaboration between the University of California Santa Cruz, the University of California Berkeley, and Northwestern University will bring together experts in different fields of physics: hydrodynamics, general relatively and radiative transfer to address important gaps in our understanding of TDEs. This understanding requires a multi-pronged approach that attempts to resolve the underlying physics at a wide range of physical and temporal scales. The phenomena of TDEs provide an exciting opportunity to study the size of SMBHs in quiescent galaxies, the stellar populations and dynamics in galactic nuclei, and the physics of black hole accretion under well-defined conditions. Whereas active galactic nuclei may be supplied by a steady stream of fuel for thousands of years, TDEs offer a unique opportunity to study a single SMBH when the mass accretion rates and feeding timescales change over days or months. The project will also include an education and public outreach program which aims to cross-fertilize the training of computational scientists and students in the visual arts and digital media using state-of-art simulations as common ground in a group environment that significantly increases the number of under-represented students trained in computational astrophysics. To do this, the astronomers will partner with university arts and education programs and with local schools. Wide-field transient surveys are currently delivering more and better data on TDEs. Fully three-dimensional simulations of accretion disks are computationally expensive, and as a result there is trade-off between running a simulation with significant resolution that only resolves a fraction of the disk and global simulations at moderate resolution that resolve the full structure. For TDEs the trade-offs are even more pronounced and require a large range of scales to be resolved simultaneously. As a consequence, running a single simulation of the full problem incorporating all of the aforementioned effects would not only be prohibitive, but also difficult to interpret because of the complexity of the interplay between the various physical mechanisms at different scales. As an alternative, the investigators will aim to answer these questions via a series of numerical experiments that isolate the key processes that regulate the disruption itself, the formation of the debris disk, the production of jets and the generation of the emanating radiation. In addition to being computationally feasible, this approach will enable a thorough understanding of each of the processes, which are likely highly reminiscent of the well-studied phenomenology of steadily-accreting AGN.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.