Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham
Streams collision in double disruptions
If two stars are tidally disrupted shortly one after the other, the streams produced by each disruption can collide before they come back towards the black hole. The movies below are obtained from hydrodynamical simulations of this process done in this paper. In the first one, a strong collision occurs between the streams because they evolve on the same orbital plane and the stream produced by the second disruption is able to catch up with that created first. The second movie shows a weaker collision happening between streams whose orbital planes are slightly inclined. No collision happens in the third movie because the stream produced second is unable to make up for its original delay.