Tidal Disruption Event Disks

Warped and Eccentric TDE Disks

Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) are highly energetic (super-Eddington) flares, which occur when a star gets so close to a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH), and the tidal force on the star from the SMBH exceeds the star's self-gravity. My work focuses on the dynamics of the accretion disk which forms soon after the star disrupts. With Prof. Dong Lai, I studied how a TDE disk misaligned with a spinning SMBH is warped, precesses and aligns with the SMBH's equatorial plane over the disk's lifetime. Recently, Prof. Gordon Ogilvie and I showed highly eccentric TDE disks may explain the thermal emission from a large number of the optically-bright TDEs observed.

Publications

J. J. Zanazzi and Gordon Ogilvie; Eccentric Tidal Disruption Event Disks around Supermassive Black Holes: Dynamics and Thermal Emission. 2020, MNRAS, 499, 5562, PDF

J. J. Zanazzi and Dong Lai; Tidal Disruption Event Disks around Supermassive Black Holes: Disk Warp and Inclination Evolution. 2019, MNRAS, 487, 4965, PDF