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The cooling envelope model for tidal disruption events (TDE) postulates thatwhile the stellar debris streams rapidly dissipate their bulk kinetic energy(``circularize"), this does not necessarily imply rapid feeding of thesupermassive black hole (SMBH). The bound material instead forms a largepressure-supported envelope which powers optical/UV emission as it undergoesgradual Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction. We present results interpreting a sampleof 15 optical TDE within the cooling envelope model in order to constrain theSMBH mass $M_{\rm BH}$, stellar mass $M_{\star}$, and orbital penetrationfactor $\beta$. The distributions of inferred properties from our samplebroadly follow the theoretical expectations of loss-cone analysis assuming astandard stellar initial mass function. However, we find a deficit of eventswith $M_{\rm BH} \lesssim 5\times 10^{5}M_{\odot}$ and $M_{\star} \lesssim0.5M_{\odot}$, which could result in part from the reduced detectability ofTDEs with these properties. Our model fits also illustrate the predicted longdelay between the optical light curve peak and when the SMBH accretion ratereaches its maximum. The latter occurs only once the envelope contracts to thecircularization radius on a timescale of months to years, consistent withdelayed-rising X-ray and non-thermal radio flares seen in a growing number ofTDE.

Tidal Disruption Events through the Lens of the Cooling Envelope Model