A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star is destroyed by the strong tidal shear of a massive black hole (MBH). The accumulation of TDE observations over the last years has revealed that post-starburst galaxies are significantly overrepresented in the sample of TDE hosts. Here we address the post-starburst preference by investigating the decline of TDE rates in a Milky-Way like nuclear stellar cluster featuring either a monochromatic (1 M$\odot$) or a complete, evolved stellar mass function. In the former case, the decline of TDE rates with time is very mild, and generally up to a factor of a few in 10 Gyr. Conversely, if a complete mass function is considered, a strong TDE burst over the first 0.1-1 Gyr is followed by a considerable rate drop, by at least an order of magnitude over 10 Gyr. The decline starts after a mass segregation time-scale, and it is more pronounced assuming a more top-heavy initial mass function and/or an initially denser nucleus. Our results thus suggest that the post-starburst preference can be accounted for in realistic systems featuring a complete stellar mass function, even in moderately dense galactic nuclei. Overall, our findings support the idea that starbursting galactic nuclei are characterized by a top-heavy initial mass function; we speculate that accounting for this can reconcile the discrepancy between observed and theoretically predicted TDE rates even in quiescent galaxies.
A star on a nearly radial trajectory approaching a massive black hole (MBH) gets tidally disrupted if it comes sufficiently close to the MBH. Here we explore what happens to binary stars whose centers of mass approach the MBH on nearly radial orbits. The interaction with the MBH often leads to both stars being disrupted in sequence. We argue that such events could produce light curves that are substantially different from those of the single disruptions, with possible features such as two local maxima. Tidal forces from the MBH can also lead the binary components to collide; these merger produ…
A star destroyed by a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a tidal disruption event (TDE) enables the study of SMBHs. We propose that the distance within which a star is completely destroyed by a SMBH, defined $r_{\rm t, c}$, is accurately estimated by equating the SMBH tidal field (including numerical factors) to the maximum gravitational field in the star. We demonstrate that this definition accurately reproduces the critical $β_{\rm c} = r_{\rm t}/r_{\rm t, c}$, where $r_{\rm t} = R_{\star}\left(M_{\bullet}/M_{\star}\right)^{1/3}$ is the standard tidal radius with $R_{\star}$ and $M_{\star}$ t…
This is the second in a series of papers presenting the results of fully general relativistic simulations of stellar tidal disruptions in which the stars' initial states are realistic main-sequence models. In the first paper (Paper I), we gave an overview of this program and discussed the principal observational implications of our work. Here we describe our calculational method and provide details about the outcomes of full disruptions, focusing on the stellar mass dependence of the outcomes for a black hole of mass $10^{6}\rm{M}_{\odot}$. We consider eight different stellar masses, from $0.1…
All known mass distributions of recently formed star cluster populations resemble a "universal" power-law function. Here we assess the impact of the extremely disruptive environment in NGC 7742's circumnuclear starburst ring on the early evolution of the galaxy's high-mass (~10^5-10^7 Msun) star cluster population. Surprisingly, and contrary to expectations, at all ages -- including the youngest, <15 Myr -- the cluster mass functions are robustly and verifiably represented by lognormal distributions that resemble those commonly found only for old, evolved globular cluster systems in the local …
A starburst induced by a galaxy merger may create a relatively thin central stellar disk at radius $\le 100$pc. We calculate the rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) by the inspiraling secondary supermassive black (SMBH) through the disk. With a small enough stellar velocity dispersion ($σ/v_c \le 0.1$) in the disk, it is shown that $10^5-10^6$ TDEs of solar-type main sequence stars per post-starburst galaxy (PSB) can be produced to explain their dominance in producing observed TDEs. Although the time it takes to bring the secondary SMBH to the disk apparently varies in the range of $\sim 0.…
Mergers are fundamental to the standard paradigm of galaxy evolution, and provide a natural formation mechanism for supermassive black hole binaries. The formation process of such a binary can have a direct impact on the rate at which stars are tidally disrupted by one or the other black hole, and the luminous signature of the tidal disruption itself can have distinct imprints of a binary companion. In this chapter we review our current understanding of the influence of black hole binarity on the properties of tidal disruption events. We discuss the rates of tidal disruption by supermassive bl…
Tidal disruption events are an excellent probe for supermassive black holes in distant inactive galaxies because they show bright multi-wavelength flares lasting several months to years. AT2019dsg presents the first potential association with neutrino emission from such an explosive event.
We examine whether disrupted binary stars can fuel black hole growth. In this mechanism, tidal disruption produces a single hypervelocity star (HVS) ejected at high velocity and a former companion star bound to the black hole. After a cluster of bound stars forms, orbital diffusion allows the black hole to accrete stars by tidal disruption at a rate comparable to the capture rate. In the Milky Way, HVSs and the S star cluster imply similar rates of 10^{-5}--10^{-3} yr^{-1} for binary disruption. These rates are consistent with estimates for the tidal disruption rate in nearby galaxies and impl…
Tidal disruption events occur rarely in any individual galaxy. Over the last decade, however, time-domain surveys have begun to accumulate statistical samples of these flares. What dynamical processes are responsible for feeding stars to supermassive black holes? At what rate are stars tidally disrupted in realistic galactic nuclei? What may we learn about supermassive black holes and broader astrophysical questions by estimating tidal disruption event rates from observational samples of flares? These are the questions we aim to address in this Chapter, which summarizes current theoretical kno…
Tidal disruption events, which occur when a star is shredded by the tidal field of a supermassive black hole, provide a means of fueling black hole accretion. Here we show, using a combination of three body orbit integrations and hydrodynamic simulations, that these events are also capable of generating circumbinary rings of gas around tight supermassive black hole binaries with small mass ratios. Depending on the thermodynamics, these rings can either fragment into clumps that orbit the binary, or evolve into a gaseous circumbinary disc. We argue that tidal disruptions provide a direct means …
In this paper, the third in this series, we continue our study of tidal disruption events of main-sequence stars by a non-spinning $10^{6}~\rm{M}_\odot$ supermassive black hole. Here we focus on the stellar mass dependence of the outcomes of partial disruptions. As the encounter becomes weaker, the debris mass is increasingly concentrated near the outer edges of the energy distribution. As a result, the mass fallback rate can deviate substantially from a $t^{-5/3}$ power-law, becoming more like a single peak with a tail declining as $t^{-p}$ with $p\simeq2-5$. Surviving remnants are spun-up in…
Accretion onto black holes is an efficient mechanism in converting the gas mass-energy into energetic outputs as radiation, wind and jet. Tidal disruption events, in which stars are tidally torn apart and then accreted onto supermassive black holes, offer unique opportunities of studying the accretion physics as well as the wind and jet launching physics across different accretion regimes. In this review, we systematically describe and discuss the models that have been developed to study the accretion flows and jets in tidal disruption events. A good knowledge of these physics is not only need…
Tidal disruption events provide a unique probe of quiescent black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies. The next generation of synoptic surveys will yield a large sample of flares from the tidal disruption of stars by massive black holes that will give insights to four key science questions: 1) What is the assembly history of massive black holes in the universe? 2) Is there a population of intermediate mass black holes that are the primordial seeds of supermassive black holes? 3) How can we increase our understanding of the physics of accretion onto black holes? 4) Can we localize sources o…
Tidal disruption of stars in dense nuclear star clusters containing supermassive central black holes (SMBH) is modeled by high-accuracy direct N-body simulation. Stars getting too close to the SMBH are tidally disrupted and a tidal disruption event (TDE) happens. TDEs probe properties of SMBH, their accretion disks, and the surrounding nuclear stellar cluster. In this paper we compare rates of full tidal disruption events (FTDE) with partial tidal disruption events (PTDE). Since a PTDE does not destroy the star, a leftover object emerges; we use the term 'leftover star' for it; two novel effec…
Odd Radio Circles or ORCs are recently discovered edge-brightened, low surface brightness circular radio sources. The progenitors and astrophysical processes responsible for their origins are presently debated. Some ORCs are host-less and some appear to be hosted in distant quiescent galaxies. Two plausible explanations consider ORCs as nearby supernova remnants with sizes a few hundred parsec in the intragroup medium of the local group of galaxies or alternatively shocked halos of a few hundred kpc extent around distant galaxies. The input shock energy required to create ORCs of a few hundred…
Close encounters between stellar-mass black holes (BHs) and stars occur frequently in dense star clusters and in the disks of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Recent studies have shown that in highly eccentric close encounters, the star can be tidally disrupted by the BH (micro-tidal disruption event, or micro-TDE), resulting in rapid mass accretion and possibly bright electromagnetic signatures. Here we consider a scenario in which the star might approach the stellar-mass BH in a gradual, nearly circular inspiral, under the influence of dynamical friction on a circum-binary gas disk or three-bo…
This paper introduces a series of papers presenting a quantitative theory for the tidal disruption of main sequence stars by supermassive black holes. Using fully general relativistic hydrodynamics simulations and MESA-model initial conditions, we explore the pericenter-dependence of tidal disruption properties for eight stellar masses ($0.15 \leq M_*/M_\odot \leq 10$) and six black hole masses ($10^5 \leq M_{BH}/M_\odot \leq 5 \times 10^7$). We present here the results most relevant to observations. The effects of internal stellar structure and relativity decouple for both the disruption cros…
Galaxy mergers produce supermassive black hole binaries, which emit gravitational waves prior to their coalescence. We perform three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to study the tidal disruption of stars by such a binary in the final centuries of its life. We find that the gas stream of the stellar debris moves chaotically in the binary potential and forms accretion disks around both black holes. The accretion light curve is modulated over the binary orbital period owing to relativistic beaming. This periodic signal allows to detect the decay of the binary orbit due to gravitational wave …
We study tidal stripping of fuzzy dark matter (FDM) subhalo cores using simulations of the Schrödinger-Poisson equations and analyze the dynamics of tidal disruption, highlighting the differences with standard cold dark matter. Mass loss outside of the tidal radius forces the core to relax into a less compact configuration, lowering the tidal radius. As the characteristic radius of a solitonic core scales inversely with its mass, tidal stripping results in a runaway effect and rapid tidal disruption of the core once its central density drops below $4.5$ times the average density of the host wi…
After the tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole, disrupted stellar debris can fall back to the hole at a rate significantly exceeding its Eddington limit. To understand how black hole mass affects the duration of super-Eddington accretion in tidal disruption events, we first run a suite of simulations of the disruption of a Solar-like star by a supermassive black hole of varying mass to directly measure the fallback rate onto the hole, and we compare these fallback rates to the analytic predictions of the "frozen-in" model. Then, adopting a Zero-Bernoulli Accretion flow as an anal…
We constrain the recent star formation histories of the host galaxies of eight optical/UV-detected tidal disruption events (TDEs). Six hosts had quick starbursts of <200 Myr duration that ended 10 to 1000 Myr ago, indicating that TDEs arise at different times in their host's post-starburst evolution. If the disrupted star formed in the burst or before, the post-burst age constrains its mass, generally excluding O, most B, and highly massive A stars. If the starburst arose from a galaxy merger, the time since the starburst began limits the coalescence timescale and thus the merger mass ratio to…
"Hard" massive black hole (MBH) binaries embedded in steep stellar cusps can shrink via three-body slingshot interactions. We show that this process will inevitably be accompanied by a burst of stellar tidal disruptions, at a rate that can be several orders of magnitude larger than that appropriate for a single MBH. Our numerical scattering experiments reveal that: 1) a significant fraction of stars initially bound to the primary hole are scattered into its tidal disruption loss cone by gravitational interactions with the secondary hole, an enhancement effect that is more pronounced for very u…
Radio emission from 23 tidal disruption event host galaxies were searched in the 144 MHz LOFAR-LoTSS2 images. Three host galaxies are detected with diffuse radio emission, which can be interpreted as either galactic synchrotron radio emission or diffuse radio halo in dense galactic environments. Non-detection of (transient) radio emission in majority of galaxies could be due to self-absorption of radio emission associated with the tidal disruption event. The detected objects are AT2018iih, RBS 1032, and NGC 5905. Non-detection for Sw 1644+57 is also reported.
The disruption of a star by the tidal field of a massive black hole is the final outcome of a chain of complex dynamical processes in the host galaxy. I introduce the "loss cone problem", and describe the many theoretical and numerical challenges on the path of solving it. I review various dynamical channels by which stars can be supplied to a massive black hole, and the relevant dynamical relaxation / randomization mechanisms. I briefly mention some "exotic" tidal disruption scenarios, and conclude by discussing some new dynamical results that are changing our understanding of dynamics near a…
Tidal Disruption of stars by super massive central black holes from dense star clusters is modeled by high-accuracy direct $N$-body simulation. The time evolution of the stellar tidal disruption rate, the effect of tidal disruption on the stellar density profile and for the first time the detailed origin of tidally disrupted stars are carefully examined and compared with classic papers in the field. Up to 128k particles are used in simulation to model the star cluster around the super massive black hole, we use the particle number and the tidal radius of black hole as free parameters for a sca…
A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star plunges through a supermassive black hole's tidal radius, at which point the star's self-gravity is overwhelmed by the tidal gravity of the black hole. In a partial TDE, where the star does not reach the full disruption radius, only a fraction of the star's mass is tidally stripped while the rest remains intact in the form of a surviving core. Analytical arguments have recently suggested that the temporal scaling of the fallback rate of debris to the black hole asymptotes to $t^{-9/4}$ for partial disruptions, effectively independently of the m…
Eccentric nuclear disks (ENDs) are a type of star cluster in which the stars lie on eccentric, apsidally-aligned orbits in a disk around a central supermassive black hole (SMBH). These disks can produce a high rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) via secular gravitational torques. Previous studies of ENDs have included stars with only one mass. Here, we present the first study of an eccentric nuclear disk with two stellar species. We show that ENDs show radial mass segregation consistent with previous results from other cluster types. Additionally, ENDs show vertical mass segregation by whic…
Tidal disruption by massive black holes is a phenomenon, during which a large part of gravitational energy can be released on a very short time-scale. The time-scales and energies involved during X-ray and IR flares observed in Galactic centre suggest that they may be related to tidal disruption events. Furthermore, aftermath of a tidal disruption of a star by super-massive black hole has been observed in some galaxies, e.g. RX J1242.6-1119A. All these discoveries increased the demand for tools for tidal disruption study in curved space-time. Here we summarise our study of general relativistic…
We analyze the outcome of the interaction between a stellar binary and a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) by performing a large number of gravitational scattering experiments. Most of the encounters result in either the ejection of an intact binary or the ejection of two individual stars following the tidal breakup of the binary. However, tidal disruption events (TDEs) and mergers constitute a few percent of the outcomes, and double, temporally distinct TDEs (i.e., separated by at least one orbit of the supermassive black hole binary) occur at the percent level. We also demonstrate that …
Tidal stellar disruptions have traditionally been discussed as a probe of the single, massive black holes (MBHs) that are dormant in the nuclei of galaxies. In Chen et al. (2009), we used numerical scattering experiments to show that three-body interactions between bound stars in a stellar cusp and a non-evolving "hard" MBH binary will also produce a burst of tidal disruptions, caused by a combination of the secular "Kozai effect" and by close resonant encounters with the secondary hole. Here we derive basic analytical scalings of the stellar disruption rates with the system parameters, assess…
We compute the rates of capture of stars by supermassive black holes, using time-dependent Fokker--Planck equation with initial conditions that have a deficit of stars on low-angular-momentum orbits. One class of initial conditions has a gap in phase space created by a binary black hole, and the other has a globally tangentially-anisotropic velocity distribution. We find that for galactic nuclei that are younger than ~0.1 relaxation times, the flux of stars into the black hole is suppressed with respect to the steady-state value. This effect may substantially reduce the number of observable ti…
This article provides a summary of XMM-Newton highlights on stellar tidal disruption events. First found with ROSAT, ongoing and upcoming sky surveys will detect these events in the 1000s. In X- rays, tidal disruption events (TDEs) provide us with powerful new probes of accretion physics under extreme conditions and on short timescales and of relativistic effects near the SMBH, of the formation and evolution of disk winds near or above the Eddington limit, and of the processes of high-energy emission from newly launched radio jets. TDEs serve as signposts of the presence of dormant, single bla…
A bright flare from a galactic nucleus followed at late times by a $t^{-5/3}$ decay in luminosity is often considered the signature of the complete tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole. The flare and power-law decay are produced when the stream of bound debris returns to the black hole, self-intersects, and eventually forms an accretion disk or torus. In the canonical scenario of a solar-type star disrupted by a $10^{6}\; M_\odot$ black hole, the time between the disruption of the star and the formation of the accretion torus could be years. We present fully general relativistic …
The tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole is expected to yield a luminous flare of thermal emission. About two dozen of these stellar tidal disruption flares (TDFs) may have been detected in optical transient surveys. However, explaining the observed properties of these events within the tidal disruption paradigm is not yet possible. This theoretical ambiguity has led some authors to suggest that optical TDFs are due to a different process, such as a nuclear supernova or accretion disk instabilities. Here we present a test of a fundamental prediction of the tidal disruption event …
The destruction of a star by the tides of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) powers a bright accretion flare, and the theoretical modeling of such tidal disruption events (TDEs) can provide a direct means of inferring SMBH properties from observations. Previously it has been shown that TDEs with $β= r_{\rm t}/r_{\rm p} = 1$, where $r_{\rm t}$ is the tidal disruption radius and $r_{\rm p}$ is the pericenter distance of the star, form an in-plane caustic, or ``pancake,'' where the tidally disrupted debris is compressed into a one-dimensional line within the orbital plane of the star. Here we show …
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) observed in massive galaxies with inferred central black hole masses $M_h > 10^8 \ M_\odot$ are presumptive candidates for TDEs by lower mass secondaries in binary systems. We use hydrodynamic simulations to quantify the characteristics of such TDEs, focusing on extreme mass ratio binaries and mpc separations where the debris stream samples the binary potential. The simulations are initialised with disruption trajectories from 3-body integrations of stars with parabolic orbits with respect to the binary center of mass. The most common outcome is found to be the f…
The tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole leads to a short-lived thermal flare. Despite extensive searches, radio follow-up observations of known thermal stellar tidal disruption flares (TDFs) have not yet produced a conclusive detection. We present a detection of variable radio emission from a thermal TDF, which we interpret as originating from a newly-launched jet. The multi-wavelength properties of the source present a natural analogy with accretion state changes of stellar mass black holes, suggesting all TDFs could be accompanied by a jet. In the rest frame of the TDF, o…
Supermassive Binary Black Holes (SMBBHs) with sub-pc separations form in the course of galaxy mergers, if both galaxies harbour massive black holes. Clear observational evidence for them however still eludes us. We propose a novel method of identifying these systems by means of reverberation mapping their circumbinary disk after a tidal disruption event has ionized it. The tidal disruption of a star at the secondary leads to strong asymmetries in the disk response. We model the shape of the velocity--delay maps for various toy disk models and more realistic gas distributions obtained by SPH si…
We describe a simple extension to existing models for the tidal heating of dark matter subhalos which takes into account second order terms in the impulse approximation for tidal heating. We show that this revised model can accurately match the tidal tracks along which subhalos evolve as measured in high-resolution N-body simulations. We further demonstrate that, when a constant density core is introduced into a subhalo, this model is able to quantitatively reproduce the evolution and artificial disruption of N-body subhalos arising from finite resolution effects. Combining these results we co…
The Galactic Center has been under intense scrutiny in the recent years thanks to the unprecedented missions aiming at measuring the gas and star dynamics near the supermassive black hole (SMBH) and at finding gravitational wave (GW) signatures of inspiralling stellar black holes. In the crowded environment of galactic nuclei, the two-body interactions alter the distribution of stars on long timescales, making them drift in energy and angular momentum. We present a simplified analytical treatment of the scattering processes in galactic stellar nuclei, assuming all stars have the same mass. We …
We describe a model of tidal disruption events (TDEs) with input physical parameters that include the black hole (BH) mass $M_{\bullet}$, the specific orbital energy $E$, the angular momentum $J$, the star mass $M_{\star}$ and radius $R_{\star}$. We calculate the rise time of the TDEs, the peak bolometric luminosity in terms of these physical parameters and a typical light curve of TDEs for various All Sky Survey (ASS) and Deep Sky Survey (DSS) missions. We then derive the expected detection rates and discuss the follow up of TDEs through observations in various spectral bands from X-rays to r…
Time domain optical surveys have discovered roughly a dozen candidate stellar tidal disruption flares in the last five years, and future surveys like the {\it Large Synoptic Survey Telescope} will likely find hundreds to thousands more. These tidal disruption events (TDEs) present an interesting puzzle: a majority of the current TDE sample is hosted by rare post-starburst galaxies, and tens of percent are hosted in even rarer E+A galaxies, which make up $\sim 0.1\%$ of all galaxies in the local universe. E+As are therefore overrepresented among TDE hosts by 1-2 orders of magnitude, a discrepan…
We investigate interactions of stellar binaries in galactic nuclear clusters with a massive black hole (MBH). We consider binaries on highly eccentric orbits around the MBH that change due to random gravitational interactions with other stars in the nuclear stellar cluster. The pericenters of the orbits perform a random walk, and we consider cases where this random walk slowly brings the binary to the Hills tidal separation radius (the so-called empty loss-cone regime). However, we find that in a majority of cases the expected separation does not occur and instead the members of the binary mer…
We present unpublished data from a tidal disruption candidate in NGC 3599 which show that the galaxy was already X-ray bright 18 months before the measurement which led to its classification. This removes the possibility that the flare was caused by a classical, fast-rising, short-peaked, tidal disruption event. Recent relativistic simulations indicate that the majority of disruptions will actually take months or years to rise to a peak, which will then be maintained for longer than previously thought. NGC 3599 could be one of the first identified examples of such an event. The optical spectra…
A likely tidal disruption of a star by the intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) of a dwarf galaxy was recently identified in association with Abell 1795. Without deep spectroscopy for this very faint object, however, the possibility of a more massive background galaxy or even a disk-instability flare from a weak AGN could not be dismissed. We have now obtained 8 hours of Gemini spectroscopy which unambiguously demonstrate that the host galaxy is indeed an extremely low-mass $(M_\ast\sim 3\times 10^8\; {\rm M}_{\odot})$ galaxy in Abell 1795, comparable to the least-massive galaxies determined to…
While once rare, observations of stars being tidally disrupted by supermassive black holes are quickly becoming commonplace. To continue to learn from these events it is necessary to robustly and systematically compare our growing number of observations with theory. We present a tidal disruption module for the Modular Open Source Fitter for Transients (MOSFiT) and the results from fitting 14 tidal disruption events (TDEs). Our model uses FLASH simulations of TDEs to generate bolometric luminosities and passes these luminosities through viscosity and reprocessing transformation functions to cre…
The tidal disruption of stars in the vicinity of massive black holes is discussed in the context of $Λ$-gravity. The latter provides an explanation to the Hubble tension as a possible consequence of two Hubble flows, the local and global ones. The bunch of notions which play role for the considered tidal effect are obtained, along with the rate of the disrupted stars. The role of pulsars is emphasized due to their ability to penetrate up to the horizon of the massive black hole as for them the tidal radius can reach the horizon. Tidal disruption mechanism also can lead to segregation of stars …
Our current understanding of the curved space-time around supermassive black holes is based on actively accreting black holes, which make up only ten per cent or less of the overall population. X-ray observations of that small fraction reveal strong gravitational redshifts that indicate that many of these black holes are rapidly rotating; however, selection biases suggest that these results are not necessarily reflective of the majority of black holes in the Universe. Tidal disruption events, where a star orbiting an otherwise dormant black hole gets tidally shredded and accreted onto the blac…
We investigate the pre-disruption gravitational dynamics and post-disruption hydrodynamics of the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. We focus on binaries with relatively low mass primaries ($10^6M_{\odot}$), moderate mass ratios, and separations with reasonably long gravitational wave inspiral times (tens of Myr). First, we generate a large ensemble (between 1 and 10 million) of restricted three-body integrations to quantify the statistical properties of tidal disruptions by circular SMBH binaries of initially-unbound stars. Compared to the reference case of …
Among the many intriguing aspects of optically discovered tidal disruption events (TDEs) is that their temperatures are lower than expected and that the temperature does not evolve as rapidly with decreasing fallback rate as would be expected in standard disk theory. We show that this can be explained qualitatively using an idea proposed by Laor & Davis in the context of normal active galactic nuclei: that larger accretion rates imply stronger winds and thus that the accretion rate through the inner disk only depends weakly on the inflow rate at the outer edge of the disk. We also show that re…
Using high-resolution, multiple-passband Hubble Space Telescope images spanning the entire optical/near-infrared wavelength range, we obtained a statistically complete sample, $U$-band selected sample of 846 extended star clusters across the disk of the nearby starburst galaxy M82. Based on careful analysis of their spectral energy distributions, we determined their galaxy-wide age and mass distributions. The M82 clusters exhibit three clear peaks in their age distribution, thus defining a relatively young, log(t/yr) < 7.5, an intermediate-age, log(t/yr) $\in$ [7.5, 8.5], and an old sample, lo…
