Super-Eddington Chimneys: On the Cooling Evolution of Tidal Disruption Event Envelopes

Abstract The formation of a compact accretion disk following a tidal disruption event (TDE) requires that the shocked stellar debris cool efficiently as it settles toward the black hole. While recent simulations suggest that stream dissipation occurs rapidly, how the weakly bound debris subsequently loses its thermal energy to assemble a compact disk near the circularization radius remains uncertain. We investigate this cooling process using axisymmetric radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of quasi-hydrostatic “TDE envelopes,” initialized with the total mass, angular momentum, and binding energy expected from a complete stellar disruption. The envelopes, supported by radiation pressure on large scales and rotation near the circularization radius, evolve through a combination of radiative diffusion, turbulent mixing, and polar outflows. In our fiducial model, a quasi-steady state is achieved in which a polar outflow radiates and expels matter at several times the Eddington luminosity. This enables the envelope to contract, forming a dense, rotationally supported ring near the circularization radius, but on a timescale roughly 10 times shorter than the naive photon-diffusion timescale. Comparative models without radiation transport confirm that cooling is essential to driving this rapid inflow. Nevertheless, across a range of envelope masses, the effective envelope cooling time scales weakly with its optical depth, implying that advective energy transport dominates over diffusion. Our results demonstrate that the cooling-induced contraction, even absent viscosity and black hole accretion, can produce luminosities and photosphere radii consistent with early UV/optical TDE emission. However, more quantitative light-curve predictions must incorporate self-consistent formation and feeding of the envelope by fallback accretion.