AT 2024wpp: the most luminous fast-evolving optical transient linked to the merger explosion of a black-hole binary
Abstract
Fast blue optical transients (FBOTs) represent one of the most exotic astrophysical transients, exhibiting unusually strong emission across X-ray, optical, and radio wavelengths. Their physical origins remain highly debated, with proposed explanations ranging from stellar explosion to tidal disruption event (TDE). Here we report observations of the most luminous FBOT, AT 2024wpp whose post-peak luminosity rebrightens in X ray and becomes flattening in optical in a manner follows the decay rate characteristic of TDEs (). This invokes energy contribution of accretion by a central compact object, getting further corroborations from hardening of X-ray spectral index and detection of outflow inferred from the emission lines at similar phase. Detailed modeling of luminsoity evolution favors a coalesce explosion of a 34 M Wolf-Rayet star with a 15 M black hole (BH), demonstrating that some FBOTs may be associated with TDE of a stellar blackhole.
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@article{arxiv.2602.20523,
title = {AT 2024wpp: the most luminous fast-evolving optical transient linked to the merger explosion of a black-hole binary},
author = {Jialian Liu and Bao Wang and Xiaofeng Wang and David Aguado and Weili Lin and Nancy-Elias Rosa and Qichun Liu and Frederick Poidevin and Ismael Perez-Fournon and Long Li and Ailing Wang and Yi Yang and Zigao Dai and Alexei V. Filippenko and Thomas G. Brink and Di Xiao and Wenxiong Li and Yifang Liang and Xuefeng Wu and Samaporn Tinyanont and Jinjun Geng and Shengyu Yan and Weimin Yuan and Jujia Zhang and Xiangyun Zeng and WeiKang Zheng and Yuanming Wang and Tao An and YongZhi Cai and Jeff Cooke and Lixin Dai and Andrea Farina and Maokai Hu and Ye Li and Chichuan Jin and Yuan Liu and David Lopez Fernandez-Nespral and Alicia Lopez Oramas and Andrea Reguitti and Xinwen Shu and Cuiying Song and Hui Sun and Ning-chen Sun and Lifan Wang and Tinggui Wang and Junjie Wei and Qingyu Wu and Danfeng Xiang and Lei Yang and Liping Li and Zhenyu Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20523},
year = {2026}
}
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