We report the serendipitous discovery of a bright point source flare in the
Abell cluster 1795 with archival EUVE and Chandra observations. Assuming the
EUVE emission is associated with the Chandra source, the X-ray 0.5-7 keV flux
declined by a factor of ~2300 over a time span of 6 years, following a
power-law decay with index ~2.44+-0.40. The Chandra data alone vary by a factor
of ~20. The spectrum is well fit by a blackbody with a constant temperature of
kT~0.09 keV (~10^6 K). The flare is spatially coincident with the nuclear
region of a faint, inactive galaxy with a photometric redshift consistent at
the one sigma level with the cluster (z=0.062476). We argue that these
properties are indicative of a tidal disruption of a star by a black hole with
log(M_BH/M_sun)~5.5+-0.5. If so, such a discovery indicates that tidal
disruption flares may be used to probe black holes in the intermediate mass
range, which are very difficult to study by other means.
Description
[1311.6162] A Tidal Disruption Event in a Nearby Galaxy Hosting an Intermediate Mass Black Hole
%0 Generic
%1 donato2013tidal
%A Donato, Davide
%A Cenko, Stephen Bradley
%A Covino, Stefano
%A Troja, Eleonora
%A Pursimo, Tapio
%A Cheung, Chi C.
%A Fox, Ori D.
%A Kutyrev, Alexander S.
%A Campana, Sergio
%A Fugazza, Dino
%A Landt, Hermine
%A Butler, Nathaniel R.
%D 2013
%K blackhole event star tidal
%T A Tidal Disruption Event in a Nearby Galaxy Hosting an Intermediate Mass
Black Hole
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.6162
%X We report the serendipitous discovery of a bright point source flare in the
Abell cluster 1795 with archival EUVE and Chandra observations. Assuming the
EUVE emission is associated with the Chandra source, the X-ray 0.5-7 keV flux
declined by a factor of ~2300 over a time span of 6 years, following a
power-law decay with index ~2.44+-0.40. The Chandra data alone vary by a factor
of ~20. The spectrum is well fit by a blackbody with a constant temperature of
kT~0.09 keV (~10^6 K). The flare is spatially coincident with the nuclear
region of a faint, inactive galaxy with a photometric redshift consistent at
the one sigma level with the cluster (z=0.062476). We argue that these
properties are indicative of a tidal disruption of a star by a black hole with
log(M_BH/M_sun)~5.5+-0.5. If so, such a discovery indicates that tidal
disruption flares may be used to probe black holes in the intermediate mass
range, which are very difficult to study by other means.
@misc{donato2013tidal,
abstract = {We report the serendipitous discovery of a bright point source flare in the
Abell cluster 1795 with archival EUVE and Chandra observations. Assuming the
EUVE emission is associated with the Chandra source, the X-ray 0.5-7 keV flux
declined by a factor of ~2300 over a time span of 6 years, following a
power-law decay with index ~2.44+-0.40. The Chandra data alone vary by a factor
of ~20. The spectrum is well fit by a blackbody with a constant temperature of
kT~0.09 keV (~10^6 K). The flare is spatially coincident with the nuclear
region of a faint, inactive galaxy with a photometric redshift consistent at
the one sigma level with the cluster (z=0.062476). We argue that these
properties are indicative of a tidal disruption of a star by a black hole with
log(M_BH/M_sun)~5.5+-0.5. If so, such a discovery indicates that tidal
disruption flares may be used to probe black holes in the intermediate mass
range, which are very difficult to study by other means.},
added-at = {2013-11-26T18:45:49.000+0100},
author = {Donato, Davide and Cenko, Stephen Bradley and Covino, Stefano and Troja, Eleonora and Pursimo, Tapio and Cheung, Chi C. and Fox, Ori D. and Kutyrev, Alexander S. and Campana, Sergio and Fugazza, Dino and Landt, Hermine and Butler, Nathaniel R.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2625425c97024d959f55e38c1c87de1bd/miki},
description = {[1311.6162] A Tidal Disruption Event in a Nearby Galaxy Hosting an Intermediate Mass Black Hole},
interhash = {eb6daf3a9ce7aae5ddaa7e83373b59dc},
intrahash = {625425c97024d959f55e38c1c87de1bd},
keywords = {blackhole event star tidal},
note = {cite arxiv:1311.6162Comment: 51 pages (single column), 4 figures; Accepted for publication in ApJ},
timestamp = {2013-11-26T18:45:49.000+0100},
title = {A Tidal Disruption Event in a Nearby Galaxy Hosting an Intermediate Mass
Black Hole},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.6162},
year = 2013
}