PS1-10jh - a tidal disruption event with an extremely low disk temperature

TL;DR

This paper models the evolution of a tidal disruption event with an unusually low disk temperature, explaining the observed optical-UV transient PS1-10jh through hydrodynamic simulations and specific black hole parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a hydrodynamic model for the debris evolution in a tidal disruption event with a low-temperature disk, fitting the observed light curve and explaining the absence of X-ray emission.

Findings

The black hole mass is estimated at 6.3 million solar masses.

The model predicts a bolometric peak luminosity of 10^45 erg/s.

The total radiated energy is approximately 2.67x10^51 erg.

Abstract

The cooler than expected optical-UV transient PS1-10jh detected by the Pan-STARRS1 survey is probably related to a tidal disruption event in which a He-rich stellar core remnant is implied. The evolution of bound debris during the disk phase is studied by solving the hydrodynamic equations. The model provides a good fit either of the raising part of the light curve in the bands g_(P1), r_(P1), and i_(P1) or in the early decay. The parameters characterizing this optimized model are the mass of the central black hole, i.e., 6.3x10^6 Msun and the critical Reynolds number Re = 10^4 that fixes the viscosity and the accretion timescale. Such a high value of Re explains the low disk temperature and the consequent absence of X-ray emission. The predicted bolometric peak luminosity is about 10^45 erg/s and the predicted total radiated energy is about Erad=2.67x10^(51) erg.