School of Physics CRA Seminar: Dr. Iair Arcavi, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope and The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCSB

A star passing close to a super-massive black hole can be torn apart in a tidal disruption event (TDE). Such events are accompanied by optical/UV flares, and can thus be used to study otherwise quiescent distant black holes. But TDEs are rare and, until recently, very few candidate flares were convincingly identified in observations. I will present three TDE candidates we recently discovered in Palomar Transient Factory data. Analyzing their observed properties together with those of candidates from the literature, we unify them, for the first time, into a single class of transients on a continuous scale of spectral characteristics. In addition, we find that most TDE candidates in our sample occur in rare E+A-like hosts (possible post-merger galaxies). This surprising result may hold important clues about the conditions favored by TDEs. Events similar to those we identified are now being discovered by various surveys at an increasing rate, igniting a flurry of theoretical work to try and interpret the observed properties. It seems we're now entering a period of rapid advancement in our understanding of how to find, observe and explain these intriguing transients.