Galaxy scale consequences of tidal disruption events: extended emission line regions, extreme coronal lines and infrared-to-optical light echoes

Abstract

Stars in galactic centers are occasionally scattered so close to the central supermassive black hole that they are completely disrupted by tidal forces, initiating a transient accretion event. The aftermath of such a tidal disruption event (TDE) produces a bright-and-blue accretion flow which is known to persist for at least a decade (observationally) and can in principle produce ionizing radiation for hundreds of years. Tidal disruption events are known (observationally) to be overrepresented in galaxies which show extended emission line regions (EELRs), with no pre-TDE classical AGN activity, and to produce transient ``coronal lines'', such as [FeX] and [FeXIV]. Using coupled CLOUDY-TDE disk simulations we show that tidal disruption event disks produce a sufficient ionizing radiation flux over their lifetimes to power both EELR of radial extents of $r \sim 10^4$ light years, and coronal lines. EELRs are produced when the ionizing radiation interacts with low density $n_H \sim 10^1 - 10^3 \, {\rm cm}^{-3}$ clouds on galactic scales, while coronal lines are produced by high density $n_H \sim 10^6 - 10^8 \, {\rm cm}^{-3}$ clouds near the galactic center. High density gas in galactic centers will also result in the rapid switching on of narrow line features in post-TDE galaxies, and also various high-ionization lines which may be observed throughout the infrared with JWST. Galaxies with a higher intrinsic rate of tidal disruption events will be more likely to show macroscopic EELRs, which can be traced to originate from the previous tidal disruption event in that galaxy, which naturally explains why TDEs are more likely to be discovered in galaxies with EELRs. We further argue that a non-negligible fraction of so-called optically selected ``AGN'' are tidal disruption events.