2022 LeRoy Apker Prize Lecture: On the nature of repeating tidal disruption events

Periodic nuclear transients have been detected with increasing frequency, with one such system—ASASSN-14ko—exhibiting highly regular outbursts on a timescale of 114 ± 1 days. It has been postulated that the outbursts from this source are generated by the repeated partial disruption of a star, but how the star was placed onto such a tightly bound orbit about the supermassive black hole remains unclear. We demonstrate that the Hills mechanism, where a binary system is destroyed by the tides of the black hole, can lead to the capture of a star on a 114 days orbit and with a pericenter distance that is comparable to the tidal radius of one of the stars within the binary. Thus, Hills capture can produce stars on tightly bound orbits that undergo repeated partial disruption, leading to a viable mechanism for generating not only the outbursts detected from ASASSN-14ko but periodic nuclear transients in general.