Tidal Disruption Events: Probes of Accretion Physics and Black Hole Demographics

Abstract: 

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) provide unique laboratories to study the demographics, immediate stellar and gaseous environments, and accretion physics of the massive black hole population. Over the past few years, time domain sky surveys such as the optical Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) have led to a surge of TDE discoveries in galaxy centers. In this talk, I will first introduce the survey and follow-up strategies of ZTF, and summarize our efforts to infer the shape of the local black hole mass function from 2e+5 Msun to 2e+7 Msun using a complete flux-limited ZTF TDE sample. Next, I will present how detailed X-ray studies of two ZTF-discovered TDEs (AT2021ehb and AT2022cmc) have revealed the evolving inflow and outflow properties across different regimes of accretion. In the end, I will discuss new opportunities in the studies of TDEs and related nuclear transients offered by upcoming time domain experiments.


Speaker: 
Dr. Yuhan Yao (姚雨含), University of California, Berkeley
Place: 
Shu Qi meeting room
Time: 
Tuesday, November 21, 2023 - 1:30PM to Tuesday, November 21, 2023 - 2:30PM
Biography: 
Yuhan Yao (姚雨含) is a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. With a broad interest in time domain astronomy and high energy astrophysics, she uses wide-field sky surveys and targeted multi-wavelength observations to study the physics of energetic transients, such as the disruption of stars by massive black holes and the explosions of stars. Yuhan obtained her Ph.D. in June 2023 from Caltech, and received her B.S. in Astronomy from Peking University in 2018.