Caltech/JPL Association for Gravitational-Wave Research Seminar

The inspiral and disruption of stars by black holes has been a subject of intense study for many years. The systems of interest are many, from the extreme mass-ratio case of a solar mass star disrupted by a supermassive black hole, to the disruption of white dwarfs by intermediate mass black holes, to the inspiral of a neutron star into a comparable-mass black hole. I will focus on the disruption of a white dwarf by a intermediate mass black hole, which results in the emission of gravitational waves and possibly of X-ray radiation from the remnant accretion disk around the black hole.