TY - JOUR
T1 - Observing Lense-Thirring precession in tidal disruption flares
AU - Stone, Nicholas
AU - Loeb, Abraham
PY - 2012/2/6
Y1 - 2012/2/6
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84856731559&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.061302
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.061302
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AN - SCOPUS:84856731559
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 108
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
IS - 6
M1 - 061302
ER -