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KIPAC Tea Talk: Nick Stone
Observing Lense-Thirring Precession in Tidal Disruption Flares
| When |
Oct 12, 2012
from 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM |
|---|---|
| Where | SLAC, FKB 3rd Floor Conf. Room |
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When a star is tidally disrupted by a supermassive black hole (SMBH), the
streams of liberated gas form an accretion disk after their return to
pericenter. We demonstrate that Lense-Thirring precession in the spacetime
around a rotating SMBH can produce significant time evolution of the disk
angular momentum vector, due to both the periodic precession of the disk
and the nonperiodic, differential precession of the bound debris streams.
Jet precession and periodic modulation of disk luminosity are possible
consequences. The persistence of the jetted x-ray emission in the Swift
J164449.3+573451 flare suggests that the jet axis was aligned with the
spin axis of the SMBH during this event.
