# Tidal Disruption Event Disks around Supermassive Black Holes: Disk Warp and Inclination Evolution

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes the warp and inclination evolution of accretion disks formed after Tidal Disruption Events around supermassive black holes, revealing how disk properties and fallback material influence their precession and alignment.

## Contribution

It provides an eigenmode analysis of TDE disks, linking disk warp, precession, and alignment timescales to SMBH and disk parameters, including fallback effects.

## Key findings

- Oscillatory warp can develop near SMBH due to non-Keplerian motion.
- Global precession frequency aligns with Lense-Thirring precession at high accretion rates.
- Fallback torque rapidly aligns the disk with the SMBH's equatorial plane.

## Abstract

After the Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) of a star around a SuperMassive Black Hole (SMBH), the bound stellar debris rapidly forms an accretion disk. If the accretion disk is not aligned with the spinning SMBH's equatorial plane, the disk will be driven into Lense-Thirring precession around the SMBH's spin axis, possibly affecting the TDE's light curve. We carry out an eigenmode analysis of such a disk to understand how the disk's warp structure, precession, and inclination evolution are influenced by the disk's and SMBH's properties. We find an oscillatory warp may develop as a result of strong non-Keplarian motion near the SMBH. The global disk precession frequency matches the Lense-Thirring precession frequency of a rigid disk around a spinning black hole within a factor of a few when the disk's accretion rate is high, but deviates significantly at low accretion rates. Viscosity aligns the disk with the SMBH's equatorial plane over timescales of days to years, depending on the disk's accretion rate, viscosity, and SMBH's mass. We also examine the effect of fall-back material on the warp evolution of TDE disks, and find that the fall-back torque aligns the TDE disk with the SMBH's equatorial plane in a few to tens of days for the parameter space investigated. Our results place constraints on models of TDE emission which rely on the changing disk orientation with respect to the line of sight to explain observations.