X-ray from Outflow-Cloud Interaction and Its Application in Tidal Disruption Events

TL;DR

This paper investigates how outflow-cloud interactions in tidal disruption events produce X-ray emissions, highlighting the role of thermal conduction and inverse Compton scattering in explaining observed delayed X-ray signals.

Contribution

It reveals that thermal conduction significantly enhances radiation from high-density clouds and introduces a model for X-ray production via outflow-cloud interactions in TDEs.

Findings

Up to 10% of bow shock energy converts into X-ray emission.

X-ray spectra exhibit photon indices of 2-3 due to inverse Compton scattering.

Thermal conduction boosts radiation efficiency in high-density clouds.

Abstract

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) may occur in supermassive black holes (SMBHs) surrounded by clouds. TDEs can generate ultrafast and large opening-angle outflow with a velocity of $\sim$ 0.01--0.2 c, which will collide with clouds with time lags depending on outflow velocity and cloud distances. Since the fraction of the outflow energy transferred into cloud's radiation is anti-correlated with the cloud density, high density clouds was thought to be inefficient in generating radiation. In this work, we studied the radiation from the outflow-cloud interactions for high density clouds, and found that thermal conduction plays crucial roles in increasing the cloud's radiation. Up to 10\% of the bow shock energy can be transferred into clouds and gives rise to X-ray emission with equivalent temperature of $10^{5-6}$ Kelvins due to the cooling catastrophe. The inverse Compton scattering of TDE UV/optical photons by relativistic electrons at bow shock generates power-law X-ray spectra with photon indices $\Gamma\sim 2-3$. This mechanism may account for some TDE candidates with delayed X-ray emission, and can be examined by delayed radio and gamma-ray emissions.