2018 ASPEN Winter Conference

The recent advent of numerous wide field transient surveys led to a

large increase in the discovery of tidal disruption events

(TDEs).

The questions facing us are: how can we use these events to study the demographic (mass, spin, binarity) of super-massive black holes in quiescent galaxies, the stellar populations and dynamics in galactic nuclei, the physics of black hole accretion under extreme conditions including the potential to detect relativistic effects near the super-massive black hole, and the physics of jet formation. 

With the near-future increased detection rates, we need to devise ways to manage the observational follow-up resources and to test and inform theoretical models for the nature of the observed TDE emission and their expected rates. The Aspen meeting will be used to lay groundwork for coordinating follow-up work  as well as bring together theorists to further the  models on the TDE emission mechanism.