Tidal disruption near black holes and their mimickers

TL;DR

This paper compares the tidal effects of black holes and wormholes on nearby stars, revealing measurable differences in tidal disruption rates and fallback rates due to their distinct geometries.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical method to quantify and compare tidal effects near black holes and wormholes, highlighting observable differences.

Findings

Wormholes cause higher tidal disruption rates than black holes.

Distinct tidal effects are due to different spacetime geometries.

Numerical procedures effectively differentiate black hole and wormhole tidal signatures.

Abstract

Black holes and wormholes are solutions of Einstein's field equations, both of which, from afar, look like a central mass. We show here that although at large distances both behave like Newtonian objects, close to the event horizon or to the throat, black holes and wormholes have different tidal effects on stars, due to their respective geometries. We quantify this difference by a numerical procedure in the Schwarzschild black hole and the exponential wormhole backgrounds, and compare the peak fallback rates of tidal debris in these geometries. The tidal disruption rates in these backgrounds are also computed. It is shown that these quantities are a few times higher for wormholes, compared to the black hole cases.