AAS NOVA Spotlights Grad Student Decker French's Paper
Bright transient flares have been observed when stars pass too close to a supermassive black hole, and are disrupted by tidal forces. Recent work by graduate student Decker French, Professor Ann Zabludoff, and Dr. Iair Arcavi shows that these events occur more often during a specific phase of a galaxy's evolution. The host galaxies of these events show little-to-no recent star formation, but evidence of a higher star formation rate in their recent pasts. This study quantifies how unusual the host galaxies are by comparing their properties to galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Galaxy-galaxy mergers may be the source of both these recently declining star formation histories, and the prevalence of tidal disruption events. You can see the AAS Nova article HERE. Below this text you'll find an enlargement of one of Decker's figures, along with an explanation.
Plot of Balmer absorption (which traces star formation in the last Gyr) vs. nebular line emission (which traces current star formation) for SDSS galaxies (grey) and the host galaxies of tidal disruption events (colored points). The host galaxies fall preferentially in the region with little current star formation, but more significant star formation in their recent pasts, which is otherwise sparsely populated by galaxies in the SDSS.
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