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On the Diversity of Fallback Rates from Tidal Disruption Events with Accurate Stellar Structure

• Authors: E. C. A. Golightly, C. J. Nixon, and E. R. Coughlin

2019 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 882 L26.

• Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 2.

Fallback rate calculated using the frozen-in approximation, in Solar masses per year as a function of time in years, for the 1 M, TAMS star, when the density profile is modeled as a γ = 5/3 polytrope (blue, dotted–dashed) and a γ = 1.35 polytrope (green, dashed); the solid red curve shows the fallback rate calculated from the MESA progenitor. Here the BH mass was set to 106 M. The different points show characteristic times in the fallback rate, including the time taken to reach the peak (tmax, asterisks), to reach ﹩\dot{M}\propto {t}^{-4/3}﹩ (t4/3, bullets), and the time taken to reach half the peak fallback rate (which occurs on both the rise and the decay of the curve; respectively thalf,1 and thalf,2, crosses). It is apparent that, while each one of these stars possesses the same mass and radius, the density profile also plays a large role in generating differences between these characteristic timescales.