A large accretion disk of extreme eccentricity in the TDE ASASSN-14li

TL;DR

This paper models the optical emission lines of the TDE ASASSN-14li using a relativistic elliptical disk with high eccentricity, revealing insights into the structure of accretion disks and X-ray sources in tidal disruption events.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the relativistic elliptical disk model can accurately reproduce the complex emission line profiles of ASASSN-14li, indicating highly eccentric accretion disks in TDEs.

Findings

The accretion disk has an eccentricity of 0.97.

The semimajor axis is 847 times the Schwarzschild radius.

The disk is formed from a star disrupted at 25r_S pericenter.

Abstract

In the canonical model for tidal disruption events (TDEs), the stellar debris circularizes quickly to form an accretion disk of size about twice the orbital pericenter of the star. Most TDEs and candidates discovered in the optical/UV have broad optical emission lines with complex and diverse profiles of puzzling origin. Liu et al. recently developed a relativistic elliptical disk model of constant eccentricity in radius for the broad optical emission lines of TDEs and well reproduced the double-peaked line profiles of the TDE candidate PTF09djl with a large and extremely eccentric accretion disk. In this paper, we show that the optical emission lines of the TDE ASASSN-14li with radically different profiles are well modelled with the relativistic elliptical disk model, too. The accretion disk of ASASSN-14li has an eccentricity 0.97 and semimajor axis of 847 times the Schwarzschild radius (r_S) of the black hole (BH). It forms as the consequence of tidal disruption of a star passing by a massive BH with orbital pericenter 25r_S. The optical emission lines of ASASSN-14li are powered by an extended X-ray source of flat radial distribution overlapping the bulk of the accretion disk and the single-peaked asymmetric line profiles are mainly due to the orbital motion of the emitting matter within the disk plane of inclination about 26\degr and of pericenter orientation closely toward the observer. Our results suggest that modelling the complex line profiles is powerful in probing the structures of accretion disks and coronal X-ray sources in TDEs.