A fast-rising tidal disruption event from a candidate intermediate-mass black hole

Angus, C.; Baldassare, Vivienne; Mockler, Brenna; Foley, R. J.; Ramírez-Ruiz, E.; Raimundo, S. I.; French, K. Decker; Auchettl, Katie; Pfister, Hugo; Gall, C.; Hjorth, J.; Drout, M. R.; Alexander, K. D.; Dimitriadis, G.; Hung, T.; Jones, D. O.; Rest, A.; Siebert, M. R.; Taggart, K.; Terreran, G.; Tinyanont, Samaporn; Carroll, Christopher M.; DeMarchi, L. M.; Earl, N.; Gagliano, Alexander; Izzo, L.; Villar, V. Ashley; Zenati, Yossef; Arendse, Nikki; Cold, C.; Boer, T. J. L. de; Chambers, K. C.; Coulter, D. A.; Khetan, N.; Lin, Chien-Cheng; Magnier, E. A.; Rojas-Bravo, C.; Wainscoat, R. J.; Wojtak, Radosław

doi:10.1038/s41550-022-01811-y

Cited by 30 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…Figure 4 also includes a comparison between the early spectra of AT 2022aedm and other fast transients. The initial He II and Hα emission is reminiscent of some SNe Ibn (Hosseinzadeh et al 2017), as well as the fast-evolving TDE AT 2020neh (Angus et al 2022). The earliest spectrum is also a reasonable match for young SNe IIn, including the shock breakout candidate PT 09uj (Ofek et al 2010).…”

Section: Spectramentioning

confidence: 81%

“…This would make a TDE very unlikely (though at the available imaging depths, we cannot rule out a globular cluster). The TDE models would also need to explain why these offset events show such a strong evolution in color compared to TDEs in their host nuclei and are so much brighter than other TDEs with fast evolution (Blagorodnova et al 2017;Nicholl et al 2020;Angus et al 2022;Charalampopoulos et al 2023).…”

Section: Physical Scenarios For Lfcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Fast-cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies

Nicholl,

Srivastav,

Fulton

et al. 2023

ApJL

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We present the discovery and extensive follow-up of a remarkable fast-evolving optical transient, AT 2022aedm, detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert Survey (ATLAS). In the ATLAS o band, AT 2022aedm exhibited a rise time of 9 ± 1 days, reaching a luminous peak with M g ≈ −22 mag. It faded by 2 mag in the g band during the next 15 days. These timescales are consistent with other rapidly evolving transients, though the luminosity is extreme. Most surprisingly, the host galaxy is a massive elliptical with negligible current star formation. Radio and X-ray observations rule out a relativistic AT 2018cow–like explosion. A spectrum in the first few days after explosion showed short-lived He ii emission resembling young core-collapse supernovae, but obvious broad supernova features never developed; later spectra showed only a fast-cooling continuum and narrow, blueshifted absorption lines, possibly arising in a wind with v ≈ 2700 km s−1. We identify two further transients in the literature (Dougie in particular, as well as AT 2020bot) that share similarities in their luminosities, timescales, color evolution, and largely featureless spectra and propose that these may constitute a new class of transients: luminous fast coolers. All three events occurred in passive galaxies at offsets of ∼4–10 kpc from the nucleus, posing a challenge for progenitor models involving massive stars or black holes. The light curves and spectra appear to be consistent with shock breakout emission, though this mechanism is usually associated with core-collapse supernovae. The encounter of a star with a stellar-mass black hole may provide a promising alternative explanation.

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Section: Spectramentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Physical Scenarios For Lfcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Fast-cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies

Nicholl,

Srivastav,

Fulton

et al. 2023

ApJL

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“…Davis et al 2020;Chilingarian et al 2018;Mezcua et al 2018), but detections of lower mass BHs remain relatively sparse. AT 2020neh was one such case, in which the detection of a fast-evolving TDE in a dwarf galaxy implied the tidal disruption of a star by an IMBH of ∼ 10 4.7−5.9 M (Angus et al 2022), although a direct correlation between the timescale of the optical light curve of a TDE and the central black hole mass is not always evident (Charalampopoulos et al 2022). Finding these TDEs can also help constrain the presentday BH mass function (D'Orazio et al 2019), and help bridge the gap between supermassive black holes and stellar-mass black holes (e.g.…”

Section: Hostsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Search for Thermonuclear Transients from the Tidal Disruption of a White Dwarf by an Intermediate Mass Black Hole

Gómez¹,

Gezari²

2023

Preprint

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The close encounter of a white dwarf (WD) with a black hole (BH) could result in the tidal disruption of the WD. During this encounter, the WD can undergo a thermonuclear explosion due to its tidal compression, resulting in an optical transient similar to a Type Ia supernova (SN Ia), hereafter a Ia-TDE. Nevertheless, this will only be physically observable if the BH is 10 5 M . Finding a Ia-TDE would therefore imply the discovery of an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH) 10 5 M . Here, we search the entire Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) alert stream for the elusive Ia-TDEs. We restrict our search to nuclear transients in dwarf galaxies, the likely sites for IMBHs, and find a total of six possible nuclear Ia-TDE candidates. We find SN 2020lrt to be the most likely Ia-TDE candidate, thanks to its strong resemblance to light curve and spectroscopic models of Ia-TDEs. We measure the stellar masses of the dwarf galaxies hosting these transients to be 10 9 M ; if confirmed to harbor BHs, these would prove the existence of IMBHs in some of the lowest-mass galaxies known. Additionally, we searched for off-nuclear Ia-TDEs, but were unable to find more robust candidates in the outskirts of galaxies than in their nuclei. This supports the hypothesis that the nuclear Ia-TDEs candidates are WDs tidally compressed by IMBHs in the cores of galaxies, as opposed to a class of transient that can happen anywhere in a galaxy. We have laid the groundwork to systematically search for Ia-TDE candidates in existing and future time-domain surveys. Rapid characterization of their nature will result in not only the confirmation of a Ia-TDE, but also the unambiguous discovery of bonafide IMBHs.

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“…HCSSs could therefore be easily identified by their kinematics, but measuring velocity dispersions of such faint objects is difficult beyond the very local universe. Other potential detection methods include gravitational lensing (Sahu et al 2022) and tidal disruption events (e.g., Ricarte et al 2021a;Angus et al 2022). No convincing candidates have been found so far.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Candidate Runaway Supermassive Black Hole Identified by Shocks and Star Formation in its Wake

Dokkum

Pasha

Buzzo

et al. 2023

ApJL

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The interaction of a runaway supermassive black hole (SMBH) with the circumgalactic medium (CGM) can lead to the formation of a wake of shocked gas and young stars behind it. Here we report the serendipitous discovery of an extremely narrow linear feature in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys images that may be an example of such a wake. The feature extends 62 kpc from the nucleus of a compact star-forming galaxy at z = 0.964. Keck Low-resolution Imaging Spectrometer spectra show that the [O iii]/Hβ ratio varies from ∼1 to ∼10 along the feature, indicating a mixture of star formation and fast shocks. The feature terminates in a bright [O iii] knot with a luminosity of ≈1.9 × 1041 erg s−1. The stellar continuum colors vary along the feature and are well fit by a simple model that has a monotonically increasing age with the distance from the tip. The line ratios, colors, and overall morphology are consistent with an ejected SMBH moving through the CGM at a high speed while triggering star formation. The best-fit time since ejection is ∼39 Myr, and the implied velocity is v BH ∼ 1600 km s−1. The feature is not perfectly straight in the HST images, and we show that the amplitude of the observed spatial variations is consistent with the runaway SMBH interpretation. Opposite the primary wake is a fainter and shorter feature, marginally detected only in [O iii] and the rest-frame far-ultraviolet. This feature may be shocked gas behind a binary SMBH that was ejected at the same time as the SMBH that produced the primary wake.

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A fast-rising tidal disruption event from a candidate intermediate-mass black hole

Cited by 30 publications

References 96 publications

AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Fast-cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies

AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Fast-cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies

The Search for Thermonuclear Transients from the Tidal Disruption of a White Dwarf by an Intermediate Mass Black Hole

A Candidate Runaway Supermassive Black Hole Identified by Shocks and Star Formation in its Wake

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