Tidal disruption of stars by super‐massive black holes—XMM‐Newton highlights and the next decade

Abstract

This article provides a summary of XMM-Newton highlights on stellar tidal disruption events. First found with ROSAT, ongoing and upcoming sky surveys will detect these events in the thousands. In X-rays, tidal disruption events (TDEs) provide us with powerful new probes of accretion physics under extreme conditions and on short timescales and of relativistic effects near the super-massive black holes (SMBHs), of the formation and evolution of disk winds near or above the Eddington limit, and of the processes of high-energy emission from newly launched radio jets. TDEs serve as signposts of the presence of dormant single black holes at the cores of galaxies, and of binary black holes as well, since TDE lightcurves are characteristically different in the latter case. XMM-Newton has started to contribute to all of these topics, and a rich discovery space is opening up in the next decade.

AstroSat view of spectral transition in the changing-look active galaxy NGC1566 during the declining phase of the 2018 outburst

“…Even, during the declining period of the 2018 outburst, Oknyansky et al (2020) observed 3 additional bursts in ∼ 1 year. The theoretical rate of TDEs is too low ∼ 10 −4 − 10 −5 galaxy −1 year −1 (See, Kawamuro et al 2016, Komossa 2015, and references therein) to produce such repetitive events. Also, the X-ray spectra of NGC 1566 are harder than a typical X-ray spectrum of TDEs (Komossa 2015(Komossa , 2017.…”

“…The theoretical rate of TDEs is too low ∼ 10 −4 − 10 −5 galaxy −1 year −1 (See, Kawamuro et al 2016, Komossa 2015, and references therein) to produce such repetitive events. Also, the X-ray spectra of NGC 1566 are harder than a typical X-ray spectrum of TDEs (Komossa 2015(Komossa , 2017. Thus, the TDEs are unlikely to be responsible for the burst activities in NGC 1566.…”

The Benefit of Simultaneous Seven-filter Imaging: 10 Years of GROND Observations

“…galaxies (Komossa 2017), or verifying signatures of General Relativity (delay in accretion disk formation or quasi-periodic modulations at Xrays; Stone et al 2018).…”

Einstein Probe’s scientific opportunities in the field of active galactic nuclei

“…以上 [26,27] , 而J1231+1106自爆发后10年内仍有较强的X 射线辐射, 这可能与吸积气体的轨道圆化和超爱丁顿 吸积过程有关 [28,29] [23] Figure 5 (Color online) (a) Sustained, short, intense soft X-ray outbursts from RX J1302+2747; (b) energy spectra of the source during its quiescent and flare states (data from Chandra and XMM-Newton) [23].…”