Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham

First light from stellar disruptions


This paper presents the first radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of disc formation during a tidal disruption event. Taken from this work, the movies below display this process for a strongly relativistic encounter and a more grazing one by showing the evolution of the gas density and radiation temperature in a slice parallel to the stellar orbital plane. The self-crossing shock is treated through an outflow of gas from the intersection point indicated with the grey circle while the white dot represents the black hole.