A tidal disruption event occurs when a star passes close enough to a black hole that differential gravity tears it apart outside the capture boundary, producing returning debris and often a luminous flare.
For a star of mass and radius near a black hole of mass , the Newtonian tidal disruption radius is under a peak-to-center tidal-acceleration convention.
The Hills mass is the black-hole mass above which a given star crosses the capture boundary before being tidally disrupted. For a Schwarzschild capture radius , it is with the corresponding tidal-radius convention.
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A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole, resulting in the gravitational forces of the black hole tearing the star apart. This event typically happens when the star approaches within a certain critical distance known as the tidal radius. During a TDE, the intense gravitational field of the black hole can exceed the gravitational forces holding the star together, leading to the star being ripped apart.