Unexpectedly Weak General Relativistic Effects in Strongly Relativistic Tidal Disruption Events

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) occur when stars are destroyed by supermassive black holes and are among the brightest nuclear transients. It has been thought that strong relativistic effects rapidly dissipate orbital energy and produce prompt disk formation when the stellar pericenter is smaller than ∼10 gravitational radii. Using a general relativistic hydrodynamic simulation of a strongly relativistic TDE involving a Sun-like star and a 10⁶ M_⊙ nonspinning black hole, we find instead that the overall evolution is similar to weakly relativistic TDEs: the debris remains highly eccentric, with most of the returned mass residing near the orbital apocenter (∼250× the initial pericenter distance), and shocks, rather than accretion, power the event. The simulation starts from the initial stellar approach and follows the debris evolution up to 35 days after the peak mass-return time (≃23 days). Although early shocks driven by strong relativistic apsidal precession and pericenter nozzle compression dissipate orbital energy efficiently, they last only about a week (∼0.3 of the peak mass-return time). Stream self-interactions increase the incoming stream’s angular momentum, thereby expanding its pericenter distance, weakening precession and shocks, and reducing dissipation. These results suggest that circularization in TDEs may proceed slowly regardless of the strength of apsidal precession, with the flow remaining highly eccentric and extended during the peak optical/UV luminosity.