Hard X-ray emission from a Compton scattering corona in large black hole mass tidal disruption events

Journal article

We extend the relativistic time-dependent thin-disc TDE model to describe non-thermal (2-10 keV) X-ray emission produced by the Compton up-scattering of thermal disc photons by a compact electron corona, developing analytical and numerical models of the evolving non-thermal X-ray light curves. In the simplest cases, these X-ray light curves follow power-law profiles in time. We suggest that TDE discs act in many respects as scaled-up versions of XRB discs, and that such discs should undergo state transitions into harder accretion states. XRB state transitions typically occur when the disc luminosity becomes roughly one per cent of its Eddington value. We show that if the same is true for TDE discs then this, in turn, implies that TDEs with non-thermal X-ray spectra should come preferentially from large-mass black holes. The characteristic hard-state transition mass is MHS ≃ 2 × 107M⊙. Hence, subpopulations of thermal and non-thermal X-ray TDEs should come from systematically different black hole masses. We demonstrate that the known populations of thermal and non-thermal X-ray TDEs do indeed come from different distributions of black hole masses. The null-hypothesis of identical black hole mass distributions is rejected by a two-sample Anderson-Darling test with a p-value <0.01. Finally, we present a model for the X-ray rebrightening of TDEs at late times as they transition into the hard state. These models of evolving TDE light curves are the first to join both thermal and non-thermal X-ray components in a unified scenario.

Authors: Mummery, A; Balbus, SA

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Volume: 504
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 4730-4742
• Publication date: 2021-04-26
• Acceptance date: 2021-04-22
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab1184
• EISSN: 1365-2966
• ISSN: 0035-8711
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR; transients: tidal disruption events; black hole physics; accretion, accretion discs