Probing the multi-wavelength light-curve evolution of Tidal Disruption Events

In my MSc thesis, I undertake a systematic and comprehensive study of the optical/UV light curves of Tidal Disruption Events, in order to better understand the properties of these events as a class and use them as a way to probe the accretion properties of SMBHs. The light curves of TDEs are expected to decay following a t^-5/3 power-law indicating fallback accretion. We find that the decay of their monochromatic light-curves deviates from this canonical picture, especially at late-times, and is more consistent with shallower power-law indices indicating emission from an accretion disk. We looked for correlations between the derived power-law indices and the black hole masses of the TDEs in my sample but we report there is no apparent trend in our results. By studying the evolution of the light-curves and the energies released, we find that the UV bands evolve quite differently than the optical ones indicating that they potentially probe different parts of the accretion. Finally, we find that optical-UV TDEs must undergo significant reprocessing and they naturally populate a "valley" between non-thermal, jetted, and thermal, non-jetted X-ray TDEs.