Simulations of Tidal Disruption Events

TL;DR

This paper reviews numerical simulation techniques used to study tidal disruption events, highlighting their applications, limitations, and contributions to understanding the complex hydrodynamics involved.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the numerical methods employed in simulating tidal disruption events and discusses their respective advantages and limitations.

Findings

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics methods are widely used in tidal disruption simulations.

Affine models have historically contributed to understanding star evolution during disruption.

The paper summarizes the progress and challenges in numerical simulation techniques.

Abstract

Numerical simulations have historically played a major role in understanding the hydrodynamics of the tidal disruption process. Given the complexity of the geometry of the system, the challenges posed by the problem have indeed stimulated much work on the numerical side. Smoothed Particles Hydrodynamics methods, for example, have seen their very first applications in the context of tidal disruption and still play a major role to this day. Likewise, initial attempts at simulating the evolution of the disrupted star with the so-called affine method have been historically very useful. In this Chapter, we provide an overview of the numerical techniques used in the field and of their limitations, and summarize the work that has been done to simulate numerically the tidal disruption process.