The Evolution of Partially Disrupted Supergiant Stellar Remnants

Johnson, Tobias

The Evolution of Partially Disrupted Supergiant Stellar Remnants

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10456/59171

Author(s)

Johnson, Tobias

Date Issued

April 24, 2025

Abstract

Tidal Disruption Events (TDE’s) are the violent gravitational interactions between stars and black holes, which usually occur in dense star clusters and galactic nuclei. The focus of this research is of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic simulations of Partial Tidal Disruption Events (PTDE’s) where a 24 M⊙ blue supergiant, made in MESA, passes sufficiently close to the black hole as to not get destroyed completely, rather the inner layers or core of the star could remain intact after a considerable amount of mass is stripped from the surviving remnant. This remnant, along with any stripped mass, can either be still gravitationally bound in an elliptical orbit around the black hole post-interaction, or have enough kinetic energy imparted into it so that it becomes ejected from the system altogether. This project finds that PTDE’s with a black hole of similar mass will lead to tidal capturing and eventual inspiral. In addition, while PTDE’s with a higher black hole mass to star mass ratio have a higher probability of kicking the remnant out of the system with a high velocity, I’ve found that this result (which is generally true for main sequence stars) is not entirely true for supergiant stars. Another focus of this research is the evolution of the stellar remnant along with its composition, which I have found does not differ significantly from a star of the same mass and radius when considered at the surface.

Major

Physics

Honors

Physics, 2025

First Reader(s)

Lombardi, James C., Jr. (Jamie)