The Evolution of Partially Disrupted Supergiant Stellar Remnants
Persistent URL
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)
Other Reader(s)
Petasis, Doros T.
Department
Physics
Type of Publication
Senior Project Paper
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
Final Spring Comp.pdf
Description
The pdf of my final copy of my comp paper.
Size
3.94 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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