Evolution of Thick Accretion Disks Produced by Tidal Disruption Events

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Geometrically thick disks may form after tidal disruption events, and rapid accretion may lead to short flares followed by long-term, lower-level emission. Using a novel accretion disk code which relies primarily on global conservation laws and the assumption that viscosity is everywhere positive, a broad range of physically allowed evolutionary sequences of thick disks is investigated. The main result is that accretion in the thick disk phase can consume only a fraction of the initial disk material before the disk cools and becomes thin. This fraction is 0.5-0.9 for disruptions around 10⁶ to 10⁷ M black holes and is sensitive to the mean angular momentum of the disk. The residual material will accrete in some form of thin disk over a longer period of time. The initial thick disk phase may reduce the dimming timescale of the disk by a factor of 2 from estimates based on thin disks alone. Assuming an 0.5 M initial thick disk, even if the thin disks become advection dominated, the black hole mass to light ratio can rise above M/L = 1 in no less than 20 (0.1/α) to 2000 (0.1/α) years following a tidal disruption event, depending on the mass of the black hole and the initial conditions of the encounter. The long-term emission will be most prevalent around lower mass, 10⁶ M black holes. If the tidal disruption rates in these galactic nuclei are 10⁻⁴ yr⁻¹, then about 10% of the nuclei should exhibit the long-term UV/optical emission at a level of 10³⁸ ergs s⁻¹.