Wandering intermediate-mass black holes and off-nuclear tidal disruption events from early star clusters
Abstract
Off-nuclear tidal disruption events (TDEs) reveal evidence for massive black holes outside galactic centers, but the origins of this wandering population remain uncertain. We investigate wandering intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) formed through runaway stellar collisions in dense, high-redshift star clusters and predict their TDE signatures across cosmic time. Our semi-analytic model samples clusters associated with low-mass subhalos at 7<z<20 and uses merger trees from the IllustrisTNG TNG50 simulation to follow the assembly of 15 elliptical galaxies with stellar masses of 109−1011 M⊙. We compare two models for high-redshift cluster formation: a maximal model taken from a high-resolution simulation and a conservative model calibrated from local cluster relations. Off-nuclear TDEs produced through this mechanism occur in bursts within 10-100 Myr of IMBH formation as the loss-cone surrounding the black hole is depleted. We estimate the rate of off-nuclear TDEs expected across time per galaxy, and characterize these events as typically occurring between 10−103 kpc from their host galaxy centers. Event rates increase with galaxy mass; in the maximal model, the progenitors of the most massive galaxies reach peak off-nuclear TDE rates of approximately 5×10−4−4×10−2 yr−1 per galaxy at 7≲ z≲13. This work provides a framework for constraining the early population of star clusters that form IMBHs through runaway collapse via their contribution to the rate of off-nuclear TDEs in the high redshift Universe.
Related
- Simulating tidal disruption events in nuclear star clusters
- Dark Halos, Intermediate-Mass BH and Nuclear Stellar Clusters in Dwarf Spheroidals
- Multi-messenger View of White Dwarf Tidal Disruption Events by Intermediate-Mass Black Holes: I. Gravitational Waves and Disk Photon and Neutrino Emissions
- The coupled evolution of nuclear star clusters and intermediate-mass black holes in a dwarf-galaxy merger
- ACORN I. Massive Black Hole Seeding and Tidal Disruption Events from Star Clusters in Cosmological Simulations
BibTeX
@misc{williams2026wandering,
title = {{Wandering intermediate-mass black holes and off-nuclear tidal disruption events from early star clusters}},
author = {Claire E. Williams and Smadar Naoz and Yihao Zhou and Tatsuya Akiba-Lewis and Mark Vogelsberger and Blakesley Burkhart and Naoki Yoshida and Avi Chen and Kyle Kremer and William Lake and Federico Marinacci and Shyam H. Menon},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.20719},
eprint = {2610.20719},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20719},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Wandering intermediate-mass black holes and off-nuclear tidal disruption events from early star clusters
AU - Claire E. Williams
AU - Smadar Naoz
AU - Yihao Zhou
AU - Tatsuya Akiba-Lewis
AU - Mark Vogelsberger
AU - Blakesley Burkhart
AU - Naoki Yoshida
AU - Avi Chen
AU - Kyle Kremer
AU - William Lake
AU - Federico Marinacci
AU - Shyam H. Menon
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.20719
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.20719
AB - Off-nuclear tidal disruption events (TDEs) reveal evidence for massive black holes outside galactic centers, but the origins of this wandering population remain uncertain. We investigate wandering intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) formed through runaway stellar collisions in dense, high-redshift star clusters and predict their TDE signatures across cosmic time. Our semi-analytic model samples clusters associated with low-mass subhalos at 7<z<20 and uses merger trees from the IllustrisTNG TNG50 simulation to follow the assembly of 15 elliptical galaxies with stellar masses of 10^9−10^11 M_⊙. We compare two models for high-redshift cluster formation: a maximal model taken from a high-resolution simulation and a conservative model calibrated from local cluster relations. Off-nuclear TDEs produced through this mechanism occur in bursts within 10-100 Myr of IMBH formation as the loss-cone surrounding the black hole is depleted. We estimate the rate of off-nuclear TDEs expected across time per galaxy, and characterize these events as typically occurring between 10−10^3 kpc from their host galaxy centers. Event rates increase with galaxy mass; in the maximal model, the progenitors of the most massive galaxies reach peak off-nuclear TDE rates of approximately 5×10^−4−4×10^−2 yr^−1 per galaxy at 7≲ z≲13. This work provides a framework for constraining the early population of star clusters that form IMBHs through runaway collapse via their contribution to the rate of off-nuclear TDEs in the high redshift Universe.
ER -