Rapid Growth of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes through Disk-induced Stellar Disruptions

Abstract

Dense nuclear star clusters provide unique environments for studying the dynamical interactions between stars and massive black holes. When an accretion disk is present, dissipative star--disk interactions can capture surrounding stars, drive their inward migration, and ultimately lead to disk-induced tidal disruption events\,(dTDEs). The long-term feeding rate from this process, however, cannot be inferred from single-orbit migration estimates alone, as it depends on the coupled evolution of disk capture, collisional relaxation, stellar depletion and replenishment, and physical mergers within the star cluster. In this work, we use high-performance direct $N$-body simulations combined with analytic prescriptions for star--disk interactions to follow this coupled evolution for intermediate-mass black holes\,(IMBHs) with accretion disks embedded in dense stellar clusters. The simulations track the formation of the stellar cusp, the capture of stars by repeated disk crossings, their subsequent orbital damping and migration, and their eventual consumption by the central IMBH. We find that dTDEs can sustain stellar mass supply rates of $\sim10^{-3}\,M_\odot \,\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$, which exceeds the Eddington-limited gas accretion rate for IMBHs with $M_\bullet<10^5\,M_\odot$. These results identify dTDEs as an efficient stellar feeding channel for IMBHs in gas-rich dense stellar systems. As one possible application, this mechanism may help transform $\sim10^3\,M_\odot$ IMBHs into more massive black-hole seeds, provided that compact stellar clusters and accretion disks persist for $>30$ Myr.