Doutoramento em Astrofísica Computacional
Numerical study of the tidal disruption of stars by the supermassive black hole Sgr A* in the Galactic Center
João Pedro Mendes Rocha

Orientação:  Miguel Ângelo Pignatelli de Avillez

A Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) lurks in the center of the Milky Way Alexander (2005), Cheng et al.(2011). This compact object, known as Sgr A*, has a mass of four million solar masses and plays animportant role in the stellar system in which resides. When the black hole’s tidal forces overcome the selfgravityof the star, this will be scattered into a fatal orbit onto the black hole producing a Tidal DisruptionEvent (TDE). In such events stars are disrupted, partially or completely, depending on the strength of theencounter. I´ve investigated the effects of TDEs in different scenarios, where the star is inbound onto theblack hole with different penetration parameters (b) that produce different fates on the stellar structureand define the boundary between the survival and destruction of the star. I performed a set of numericalsimulations with the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code Phantom for the phase of disruptionuntil 120 hours to include some of the effects of TDEs, such as the release of energy from the star and theresultant stellar debris.

Keywords: Tidal Disruption Events, Super Massive Black Hole, Stars