Pancake detonation of stars by black holes in galactic nuclei

Abstract

Recent efforts to understand exotic phenomena in galactic nuclei commonly postulate the presence of a massive black hole accreting gas produced by tidal or collisional disruption of stars. For black holes in the mass range 10⁴–10⁷ M_⊙, individual stars penetrating well inside the Roche radius will undergo compression to a short-lived pancake configuration very similar to that produced by a high velocity symmetric collision of the kind likely to occur in the neighbourhood of black holes in the higher mass range ≳10⁹ M_⊙. Thermonuclear energy release ensuing in the more extreme events may be sufficient to modify substantially the working of the entire accretion process.