UV and optical LCs of the TDE AT2021ehb Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Yao Y.
  2. Lu W.
  3. Guolo M.
  4. Pasham D.R.
  5. Gezari S.
  6. Gilfanov M.,Gendreau K.C.
  7. Harrison F.
  8. Cenko S.B.
  9. Kulkarni S.R.
  10. Miller J.M.,Walton D.J.
  11. Garcia J.A.
  12. van Velzen S.
  13. Alexander K.D.,Miller-Jones J.C.A.
  14. Nicholl M.
  15. Hammerstein E.
  16. Medvedev P.
  17. Stern D.,Ravi V.
  18. Sunyaev R.
  19. Bloom J.S.
  20. Graham M.J.
  21. Kool E.C.
  22. Mahabal A.A.,Masci F.J.
  23. Purdum J.
  24. Rusholme B.
  25. Sharma Y.
  26. Smith R.
  27. Sollerman J.
  28. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We present X-ray, UV, optical, and radio observations of the nearby (~78Mpc) tidal disruption event AT2021ehb/ZTF21aanxhjv during its first 430 days of evolution. AT2021ehb occurs in the nucleus of a galaxy hosting a ~10^7^M_{sun}_ black hole (MBH inferred from host galaxy scaling relations). High-cadence Swift and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) monitoring reveals a delayed X-ray brightening. The spectrum first undergoes a gradual soft -> hard transition and then suddenly turns soft again within 3 days at {delta}t~272d during which the X-ray flux drops by a factor of 10. In the joint NICER+NuSTAR observation ({delta}t=264d, harder state), we observe a prominent nonthermal component up to 30keV and an extremely broad emission line in the iron K band. The bolometric luminosity of AT2021ehb reaches a maximum of 6.0_-3.8_^+10.4^%L_Edd_ when the X-ray spectrum is the hardest. During the dramatic X-ray evolution, no radio emission is detected, the UV/optical luminosity stays relatively constant, and the optical spectra are featureless. We propose the following interpretations: (i) the soft -> hard transition may be caused by the gradual formation of a magnetically dominated corona; (ii) hard X-ray photons escape from the system along solid angles with low scattering optical depth (~a few) whereas the UV/optical emission is likely generated by reprocessing materials with much larger column density-the system is highly aspherical; and (iii) the abrupt X-ray flux drop may be triggered by the thermal-viscous instability in the inner accretion flow, leading to a much thinner disk.

Keywords
  1. x-ray-sources
  2. ultraviolet-photometry
  3. visible-astronomy
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2022ApJ...937....8Y
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IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/937/8

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History

2024-08-30T14:46:20Z
Resource record created
2024-08-30T13:54:48Z
Updated
2024-08-30T14:46:20Z
Created

Contact

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CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
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