Tidal disruption events: opportunities in the upcoming decade

Abstract We are living in an exciting era of wide-field time-domain surveys, which are transforming our understanding of short-lived (transient) phenomena. Nuclear transients, those that occur in galactic nuclei, uniquely probe the inner parsecs of galaxies that are otherwise inaccessible beyond the Milky Way. Among these events, tidal disruption events (TDEs), in which a star is destroyed by a supermassive black hole and a luminous electromagnetic flare generated in the process can briefly outshine its host galaxy, have become a focal point of attention. Since the first theoretical models in the late 1980 s and the earliest observational candidates in the late 1990 s, an expanding sample of TDEs has revealed a number of unexpected behaviors that challenge the classical picture. Many of these puzzles remain unresolved. In this article, we highlight several of these open questions and discuss how ongoing and upcoming observational programs and facilities, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time and the Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite, may provide the observational leverage needed to address them.