Quasi-Periodic Eruptions from Star-Disc Interaction

Note unusual day - Sunday

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are an emerging class of high amplitude bursts of X-ray radiation, repeating on a hours-day timescale, recently discovered near the central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of a few low-mass galaxies. In this talk, I will present a model for QPEs that involves a main-sequence star passing through the SMBH's accretion disk twice per orbit. I will show that this model naturally produces the observed period, luminosity, emission temperature, duration, and occurrence rate of QPEs. I will also discuss the implications of the observations and of our model for probing the accretion physics around SMBHs, the rate of extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), and the potential of QPE observations in unveiling a population of otherwise quiescent intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). I will conclude by discussing the discovery prospects of related repeating nuclear transients in light of upcoming UV surveys such as ULTRASAT.