arXiv subjects

Clément Bonnerot

Publications and source records attributed to Clément Bonnerot.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The impact of recombination during tidal disruption events

During a tidal disruption event, the resulting debris stream cools down adiabatically due to the tidal stretching. As the temperature drops, the gas is expected to undergo chemical processes, which can release thermal energy into the stream, potentially affecting the subsequent gas evolution. For the first time, we investigate in detail this effect and its dynamical impact on the early-time evolution of the stream by making use of three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations coupled with a realistic equation of state. We find that a few days after disruption, the energy injected by hydrogen recombination and molecular hydrogen formation causes the stream thickness to grow much more rapidly. In the bound debris, this effect stops the stream's confinement by self-gravity before the gas reaches apocentre. As a result, the maximum stream thickness increases by a factor that ranges from a few, for the most bound gas, to a few tens for the near-parabolic gas, reaching $\approx 30 \, R_{\star} $ around the peak of the mass fallback rate. We discuss how this accelerated stream expansion may affect the subsequent evolution of the gas, estimate the luminosity powered by recombination in the unbound debris, and evaluate the potential influence of non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamic effects. By characterizing the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic properties of the stream before its return near pericentre, our results provide physically motivated initial conditions to self-consistently model the later stages of tidal disruption events, offering a promising pathway to unveiling the physical origins of their observed emission.

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arXiv2026

The impact of magnetic fields during tidal disruption events

During a tidal disruption event (TDE) the stream debris inherits the magnetic field of the star. As the stream stretches, the magnetic field evolves and can eventually become dynamically important. We study this effect by means of magnetohydrodynamic simulations and a semi-analytic model of the disruption of a main-sequence star by a supermassive black hole. For stellar magnetic fields stronger than $\sim 10^4\,\rm{G}$, magnetic pressure becomes important in a significant fraction of the mass of the stream, leading to a fast increase in its thickness, an effect that may impact its subsequent evolution. We find that this dynamical effect is associated with a phase of transverse equilibrium between magnetic and tidal forces, which causes the stream width to increase with distance to the black hole as $H \propto R^{5/4}$. In the unbound tail, this fast expansion could enhance the radio emission produced by the interaction with the ambient medium, while in the returning stream, it may qualitatively affect the subsequent gas evolution, particularly the gas dynamics and radiative properties of shocks occurring after the stream's return to pericentre. By characterizing the magnetohydrodynamic properties of the stream from disruption to the first return to pericentre, this work provides physically motivated initial conditions for future studies of the later phases of TDEs, accounting for magnetic fields. This will ultimately shed light on the role of magnetic fields in enabling angular momentum transport in the ensuing accretion disk, thereby affecting observable signatures such as X-ray radiation and relativistic outflows.

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arXiv2026

Radiation-hydrodynamics of star-disc collisions for quasi-periodic eruptions

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are recently discovered transients of unknown nature occurring near supermassive black holes, which feature bright X-ray bursts separated by hours to days. A promising model for QPEs is the star-disc collisions model, where a star repeatedly interacts with an accretion disc around a black hole, creating shocks that expel dense outflows of gas from which radiation emerges. We investigate the dynamics of the star-disc collisions, the properties of the outflows, and the resulting radiation signatures. Our study focuses on the generic case where the star remains unperturbed by the collision and the stellar crossing time through the disc is sufficiently long for shocked gas to flow around the star. We performed a three-dimensional (3D) radiation-hydrodynamics simulation of the star-disc collision. The star was modeled as a solid, spherical body, and the interaction was simulated for a small, local section of the accretion disc. We found that star-disc collisions generate a nearly paraboloidal bow shock. The heating of gas is not confined to the column of gas directly ahead of the star but also extends laterally as the shock front expands sideways while traveling with the star. As the star crosses the disc, it injects momentum preferentially along its direction of motion, leading to an asymmetric redistribution of energy and momentum. As a result, two outflows emerge on opposite sides of the disc with different properties: the forward outflow expands faster, contains more mass, carries more energy, and is about twice as luminous as the backward outflow. Our findings suggest that the asymmetry in outflow properties and luminosity arises naturally from the collision dynamics, offering a possible explanation for the alternating strong-weak flare patterns observed in several QPE sources.

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arXiv2024

pAGN: the one-stop solution for AGN disc modeling

Models of accretion discs surrounding active galactic nuclei (AGNs) find vast applications in high-energy astrophysics. The broad strategy is to parametrize some of the key disc properties such as gas density and temperature as a function of the radial coordinate from a given set of assumptions on the underlying physics. Two of the most popular approaches in this context were presented by Sirko & Goodman (2003) and Thompson et al. (2005). We present a critical reanalysis of these widely used models, detailing their assumptions and clarifying some steps in their derivation that were previously left unsaid. Our findings are implemented in the pAGN module for the Python programming language, which is the first public implementation of these accretion-disc models. We further apply pAGN to the evolution of stellar-mass black holes embedded in AGN discs, addressing the potential occurrence of migration traps.

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arXiv2024

Spin-induced offset stream self-crossing shocks in tidal disruption events

Tidal disruption events occur when a star is disrupted by a supermassive black hole, resulting in an elongated stream of gas that partly falls back to the pericenter. Due to apsidal precession, the returning stream may collide with itself, leading to a self-crossing shock that launches an outflow. If the black hole spins, this collision may additionally be affected by Lense-Thirring precession that can cause an offset between the two stream components. We study the impact of this effect on the outflow properties by carrying out local simulations of collisions between offset streams. As the offset increases, we find that the geometry of the outflow becomes less spherical and more collimated along the directions of the incoming streams, with less gas getting unbound by the interaction. However, even the most grazing collisions we consider significantly affect the trajectories of the colliding gas, likely promoting subsequent strong interactions near the black hole and rapid disc formation. We analytically compute the dependence of the offset to stream width ratio, finding that even slowly spinning black holes can cause both strong and grazing collisions. We estimate that the self-crossing shock luminosity is lower for an offset collision than an aligned one since radiation energy injected by the shock is significantly lower for more offset collisions. We find that the deviation from outflow sphericity may cause significant variations in the efficiency at which X-ray radiation from the disc is reprocessed to the optical band, depending on the viewing angle, and increase the degree of the observed polarization. These potentially observable features hold the promise of constraining the black hole spin from tidal disruption events.

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arXiv2023

On rapid binary mass transfer -- I. Physical model

In some semi-detached binary systems, the donor star may transfer mass to the companion at a very high rate. We propose that, at sufficiently high mass-transfer rates such that the accretion disk around the companion becomes geometrically thick (or advection-dominated) near the disk outer radius, a large fraction of the transferred mass will be lost through the outer Lagrangian (L2) point, as a result of the excessive energy generated by viscous heating that cannot be efficiently radiated away. A physical model is constructed where the L2 mass loss fraction is given by the requirement that the remaining material in the disk has Bernoulli number equal to the L2 potential energy. Our model predicts significant L2 mass loss at mass-transfer rates exceeding a few times 10^{-4} Msun/yr. An equatorial circum-binary outflow (CBO) is formed in these systems. Implications for the orbital evolution and the observational appearance are discussed. In particular, (1) rapid angular momentum loss from the system tends to shrink the orbit and hence may increase the formation rate of mergers and gravitational-wave sources; (2) photons from the hot disk wind are reprocessed by the CBO into longer wavelength emission in the infrared bands, consistent with Spitzer observations of some ultra-luminous X-ray sources.

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arXiv2022

From Pericenter and Back: Full Debris Stream Evolution in Tidal Disruption Events

When a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole, it gets disrupted by strong tidal forces. The stellar debris then evolves into an elongated stream of gas that partly falls back towards the black hole. We present an analytical model describing for the first time the full stream evolution during such a tidal disruption event (TDE). Our framework consists in dividing the stream into different sections of elliptical geometry, whose properties are independently evolved in their co-moving frame under the tidal, pressure, and self-gravity forces. Through an explicit treatment of the tidal force and the inclusion of the gas angular momentum, we can accurately follow the stream evolution near pericenter. Our model evolves the longitudinal stream stretching and both transverse widths simultaneously. For the latter, we identify two regimes depending on whether the dynamics is entirely dominated by the tidal force (ballistic regime) or additionally influenced by pressure and self-gravity (hydrostatic regime). We find that the stream undergoes transverse collapses both shortly after the stellar disruption and upon its return near the black hole, at specific locations determined by the regime of evolution considered. The stream evolution predicted by our model can be used to determine the subsequent interactions experienced by this gas that are at the origin of most of the electromagnetic emission from TDEs. Our results suggest that the accretion disk may be fed at a rate that differs from the standard fallback rate, which would provide novel observational signatures dependent on black hole spin.

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arXiv2022

The nozzle shock in tidal disruption events

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) occur when a star gets torn apart by the strong tidal forces of a supermassive black hole, which results in the formation of a debris stream that partly falls back towards the compact object. This gas moves along inclined orbital planes that intersect near pericenter, resulting in a so-called "nozzle shock". We perform the first dedicated study of this interaction, making use of a two-dimensional simulation that follows the transverse gas evolution inside a given section of stream. This numerical approach circumvents the lack of resolution encountered near pericenter passage in global three-dimensional simulations using particle-based methods. As it moves inward, we find that the gas motion is purely ballistic, which near pericenter causes strong vertical compression that squeezes the stream into a thin sheet. Dissipation takes place at the resulting nozzle shock, inducing a rise in pressure that causes the collapsing gas to bounce back, although without imparting significant net expansion. As it recedes to larger distances, this matter continues to expand while remaining thin despite the influence of pressure forces. This gas evolution specifies the strength of the subsequent self-crossing shock, which we find to be more affected by black hole spin than previously estimated. We also evaluate the impact of general-relativistic effects, viscous dissipation, magnetic fields and radiative processes on the nozzle shock. This study represents an important step forward in the theoretical understanding of TDEs, bridging the gap between our robust knowledge of the fallback rate and the more complex following stages, during which most of the emission occurs.

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arXiv2021

General Relativistic Stream Crossing in Tidal Disruption Events

When a star is tidally disrupted by a supermassive black hole (BH), the gas debris is stretched into an elongated stream. The longitudinal motion of the stream follows geodesics in the Kerr spacetime and the evolution in the transverse dimensions is decoupled from the longitudinal motion. Using an approximate tidal equation, we calculate the evolution of the stream thickness along the geodesic, during which we treat the effect of nozzle shocks as a perfect bounce. Intersection occurs when the thickness exceeds the closest approach separation. This algorithm allows us to explore a wide parameter space of orbital angular momenta, inclinations, and BH spins to obtain the properties of stream intersection. We identify two collision modes, split evenly among all cases: "rear-end" collisions near the pericenter at an angle close to $0$ and "head-on" collisions far from the pericenter at an angle close to $π$. The intersection typically occurs between consecutive half-orbits with a delay time that spans a wide range (from months up to a decade). The intersection radius generally increases with the orbital angular momentum and depends less strongly on the inclination and BH spin. The thickness ratio of the colliding ends is of order unity. The transverse separation is a small fraction of the sum of the two thicknesses, so a large fraction of the stream is shock-heated in an offset collision. Many of the numerical results can be analytically understood in a post-Newtonian picture, where the orientation of an elliptical orbit undergoes apsidal and Lense-Thirring precessions. Instead of thickness inflation due to energy dissipation at nozzle shocks as invoked in earlier works, we find the physical reason for stream collision to be a geometric one. After the collision, we expect the gas to undergo secondary shocks and form an accretion disk, generating bright electromagnetic emission.

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arXiv2021

First light from tidal disruption events

When a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole, it gets torn apart by strong tidal forces in a tidal disruption event, or TDE. Half of the elongated stream of debris comes back to the stellar pericenter where relativistic apsidal precession induces a self-crossing shock. As a result, the gas gets launched into an outflow that can experience additional interactions, leading to the formation of an accretion disc. We carry out the first radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of this process, making use of the same injection procedure to treat the self-crossing shock as in our previous adiabatic study (Bonnerot & Lu 2020). Two sets of realistic parameters of the problem are considered that correspond to different strengths of this initial interaction. In both cases, we find that the injected matter has its trajectories promptly circularized by secondary shocks taking place near the black hole. However, the generated internal energy efficiently diffuses away in the form of radiation, which results in a thin vertical profile of the formed disc. The diffusing photons promptly irradiate the surrounding debris until they emerge with a bolometric luminosity of $L\approx 10^{44} \, \rm erg\, s^{-1}$. Towards the self-crossing shock, diffusion is however slowed that results in a shallower luminosity increase, with a potentially significant component in the optical band. Matter launched to large distances continuously gains energy through radiation pressure, which can cause a significant fraction to become unbound. This work provides direct insight into the origin of the early emission from TDEs, which is accessed by a rapidly increasing number of observations.

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arXiv2020

Formation of an Accretion Flow

After a star has been tidally disrupted by a black hole, the debris forms an elongated stream. We start by studying the evolution of this gas before its bound part returns to the original stellar pericenter. While the axial motion is entirely ballistic, the transverse directions of the stream are usually thinner due to the confining effects of self-gravity. This basic picture may also be influenced by additional physical effects such as clump formation, hydrogen recombination, magnetic fields and the interaction with the ambient medium. We then examine the fate of this stream when it comes back to the vicinity of the black hole to form an accretion flow. Despite recent progress, the hydrodynamics of this phase remains uncertain due to computational limitations that have so far prevented us from performing a fully self-consistent simulation. Most of the initial energy dissipation appears to be provided by a self-crossing shock that results from an intersection of the stream with itself. The debris evolution during this collision depends on relativistic apsidal precession, expansion of the stream from pericenter, and nodal precession induced by the black hole spin. Although the combined influence of these effects is not fully understood, current works suggest that this interaction is typically too weak to significantly circularize the trajectories, with its main consequence being an expansion of the shocked gas. Global simulations of disc formation using simplified initial conditions find that the debris experiences additional collisions that cause its orbits to become more circular until eventually settling into a thick structure. These works suggest that this process completes faster for more relativistic encounters due to stronger shocks. However, important aspects still remain to be understood at the time of writing, due to numerical challenges and the complexity of this process.

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arXiv2020

On the formation of GW190814

The LIGO-Virgo collaboration recently reported a puzzling event, GW190814, with component masses of 23 and 2.6 solar masses. Motivated by the relatively small rate of such a coalescence and the fact that the mass of the secondary is close to the total mass of known binary neutron star (bNS) systems, we propose that GW190814 was a second-generation merger from a hierarchical triple system, i.e., the remnant from the bNS coalescence was able to merge again with the 23 Msun black hole (BH) tertiary. We show that this occurs at a sufficiently high probability provided that the semimajor axis of the outer orbit is less than a few AU at the time of bNS coalescence. It remains to be explored whether the conditions for the formation of such tight triple systems are commonly realized in the Universe, especially in low metallicity (less than 0.1 solar) environments. Our model provides a number of predictions. (1) The spin of the secondary in GW190814-like systems is 0.6 to 0.7. (2) The component mass distribution from a large sample of LIGO sources should have a narrow peak between 2.5 and ~3.5 Msun, whereas the range between ~3.5 and ~5 Msun stays empty (provided that stellar evolution does not generate such BHs in the "mass gap"). (3) About 90% (10%) of GW190814-like events have an eccentricity of e > 2x10^{-3} (> 0.1) near gravitational wave frequency of 10 mHz. (4) A significant fraction (> 10%) of bNS mergers should have signatures of a massive tertiary at a distance of a few AU in the gravitational waveform. (5) There are 10^5 undetected radio-quiet bNS systems with a massive BH tertiary in the Milky Way.

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arXiv2019

Self-intersection of the Fallback Stream in Tidal Disruption Events

We propose a semi-analytical model for the self-intersection of the fallback stream in tidal disruption events (TDEs). When the initial periapsis is less than about 15 gravitational radii, a large fraction of the shocked gas is unbound in the form of a collision-induced outflow (CIO). This is because large apsidal precession causes the stream to self-intersect near the local escape speed at radius much below the apocenter. The rest of the fallback gas is left in more tightly bound orbits and quickly joins the accretion flow. We propose that the CIO is responsible for reprocessing the hard emission from the accretion flow into the optical band. This picture naturally explains the large photospheric radius (or low blackbody temperature) and typical widths of the H and/or He emission lines seen in optical TDEs. We predict the CIO-reprocessed spectrum in the infrared to be L_ν~ ν^{~0.5}, shallower than a blackbody. The partial sky coverage of the CIO also provides a unification of the diverse X-ray behaviors of optical TDEs. According to this picture, optical surveys filter out a large fraction of TDEs with low-mass blackholes due to lack of a reprocessing layer, and the volumetric rate of optical TDEs is nearly flat wrt. the blackhole mass for M < 10^7 solar masses. This filtering causes the optical TDE rate to be lower than the total rate by a factor of ~10 or more. When the CIO is decelerated by the ambient medium, radio emission at the level of that in ASASSN-14li may be produced, but the timescales and peak luminosities can be highly diverse. Finally, our method paves the way for global simulations of the disk formation process by injecting gas at the intersection point according to the prescribed velocity and density profiles.

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arXiv2019

Simulating realistic disc formation in tidal disruption events

A star coming too close to a supermassive black hole gets disrupted by the tidal force of the compact object in a tidal disruption event, or TDE. Following this encounter, the debris evolves into an elongated stream, half of which coming back to pericenter. Relativistic apsidal precession then leads to a self-crossing shock that initiates the formation of an accretion disc. We perform the first simulation of this process considering a realistic stellar trajectory and black hole mass, which has so far eluded investigations for computational reasons. This numerical issue is alleviated by using as initial conditions the outflow launched by the self-crossing shock according the local simulation of Lu & Bonnerot (2019). We find that the gas leaving the intersection point experiences numerous secondary shocks that result in the rapid formation of a thick and marginally-bound disc. The mass distribution features two overdensities identified as spiral shocks that drive slow gas inflow along the mid-plane. Inward motion primarily takes place along the funnels of the newly-formed torus, from which a fraction of the matter can get accreted. Further out, the gas moves outward forming an extended envelope completely surrounding the accretion flow. Secondary shocks heat the debris at a rate of a few times $10^{44} \, \rm erg \, s^{-1}$ with a large fraction likely participating to the bolometric luminosity. These results pave the way towards a complete understanding of the early radiation from TDEs that progressively becomes accessible from observations.

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arXiv2018

Phantom: A smoothed particle hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics code for astrophysics

We present Phantom, a fast, parallel, modular and low-memory smoothed particle hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics code developed over the last decade for astrophysical applications in three dimensions. The code has been developed with a focus on stellar, galactic, planetary and high energy astrophysics and has already been used widely for studies of accretion discs and turbulence, from the birth of planets to how black holes accrete. Here we describe and test the core algorithms as well as modules for magnetohydrodynamics, self-gravity, sink particles, H_2 chemistry, dust-gas mixtures, physical viscosity, external forces including numerous galactic potentials as well as implementations of Lense-Thirring precession, Poynting-Robertson drag and stochastic turbulent driving. Phantom is hereby made publicly available.

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arXiv2018

Streams collision as possible precursor of double tidal disruption events

The rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) can vary by orders of magnitude depending on the environment and the mechanism that launches the stars towards the black hole's vicinity. For the largest rates, two disruptions can take place shortly one after the other in a double TDE. In this case, the two debris streams may collide with each other before falling back to the black hole resulting in an electromagnetic emission that is absent from single TDEs. We analytically evaluate the conditions for this streams collision to occur. It requires that the difference in pericenter location between the two disruptions makes up for the time delay between them. In addition, the width of the streams must compensate for the vertical offset induced by the inclination of their orbital planes. If the double TDE happens following the tidal separation of a binary, we find that the streams can collide with a probability as high as $44\%$. We validate our analytical conditions for streams collision through hydrodynamical simulations and find that the associated shocks heat the gas significantly. If photons are able to rapidly escape, a burst of radiation ensues lasting a few days with a luminosity $\sim 10^{43}\, \rm erg\, s^{-1}$, most likely in the optical band. This signal represents a precursor to the main flare of TDEs that could in particular be exploited to determine the efficiency of disc formation from the stellar debris.

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arXiv2017

On the Papaloizou-Pringle instability in tidal disruption events

We demonstrate that the compact, thick disc formed in a tidal disruption event may be unstable to non-axisymmetric perturbations in the form of the Papaloizou-Pringle instability. We show this can lead to rapid redistribution of angular momentum that can be parameterised in terms of an effective Shakura-Sunyaev $α$ parameter. For remnants that have initially weak magnetic fields, this may be responsible for driving mass accretion prior to the onset of the magneto-rotational instability. For tidal disruptions around a $10^6$ M$_{\odot}$ black hole, the measured accretion rate is super-Eddington but is not sustainable over many orbits. We thus identify a method by which the torus formed in tidal disruption event may be significantly accreted before the magneto-rotational instability is established.

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arXiv2017

Magnetic field evolution in tidal disruption events

When a star gets tidally disrupted by a supermassive black hole, its magnetic field is expected to pervade its debris. In this paper, we study this process via smoothed particle magnetohydrodynamical simulations of the disruption and early debris evolution including the stellar magnetic field. As the gas stretches into a stream, we show that the magnetic field evolution is strongly dependent on its orientation with respect to the stretching direction. In particular, an alignment of the field lines with the direction of stretching induces an increase of the magnetic energy. For disruptions happening well within the tidal radius, the star compression causes the magnetic field strength to sharply increase by an order of magnitude at the time of pericentre passage. If the disruption is partial, we find evidence for a dynamo process occurring inside the surviving core due to the formation of vortices. This causes an amplification of the magnetic field strength by a factor of $\sim 10$. However, this value represents a lower limit since it increases with numerical resolution. For an initial field strength of 1 G, the magnetic field never becomes dynamically important. Instead, the disruption of a star with a strong 1 MG magnetic field produces a debris stream within which magnetic pressure becomes similar to gas pressure a few tens of hours after disruption. If the remnant of one or multiple partial disruptions is eventually fully disrupted, its magnetic field could be large enough to magnetically power the relativistic jet detected from Swift J1644+57. Magnetized streams could also be significantly thickened by magnetic pressure when it overcomes the confining effect of self-gravity.

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