Optical Flares from the Tidal Disruption of Stars by Massive Black Holes

A star that wanders too close to a massive black hole (BH) is shredded by the BH’s tidal gravity. Stellar gas falls back to the BH at a rate initially exceeding the Eddington rate, releasing a flare of energy. In anticipation of upcoming transient surveys, we predict the light curves and spectra of tidal flares as a function of time, highlighting the unique signatures of tidal flares at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. A reasonable fraction of the gas initially bound to the BH is likely blown away when the fallback rate is super-Eddington at early times. This outflow produces an optical luminosity comparable to that of a supernova; such events have durations of ∼ 10 days and may have been missed in supernova searches that exclude the nuclear regions of galaxies. When the fallback rate subsides below Eddington, the gas accretes onto the BH via a thin disk whose emission peaks in the UV to soft X-rays. Some of this emission is reprocessed by the unbound stellar debris, producing a spectrum of very broad emission lines (with no corresponding narrow forbidden lines). These lines are the strongest for BHs with MBH ∼ 10 5 − 106M⊙ and thus optical surveys are particularly sensitive to the lowest mass BHs in galactic nuclei. Calibrating our models to ROSAT and GALEX observations, we predict detection rates for Pan-STARRS, PTF, and LSST and highlight some of the observational challenges associated with studying tidal disruption events in the optical. Upcoming surveys such as Pan-STARRS should detect at least tens of events per year, and may detect many more if current models of outflows during super-Eddington accretion are reasonably accurate. These surveys will significantly improve our knowledge of stellar dynamics in galactic nuclei, the physics of super-Eddington accretion, the demography of intermediate mass BHs, and the role of tidal disruption in the growth of massive BHs.