English

Multiwavelength Study of an X-ray Tidal Disruption Event Candidate in NGC 5092

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2020-03-23 v1

Abstract

We present multiwavelength studies of a transient X-ray source, XMMSL1 J131952.3+225958, associated with the galaxy NGC 5092 at z=0.023z=0.023 detected in the XMM-Newton SLew survey (XMMSL). The source brightened in the 0.2--2 keV band by a factor of >20>20 in 2005 as compared with previous flux limits and then faded by a factor of >200>200 as observed with it XMM-Newton in 2013 and with it Swift in 2018. At the flaring state, the X-ray spectrum can be modeled with a blackbody at a temperature of \sim 60 eV and an overall luminosity of \sim 1.5×10431.5 \times 10^{43} erg s1^{-1}. A UV flare and optical flare were also detected with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, respectively, within several months of the X-ray flare, whose nonstellar UV--optical spectrum can be described with a blackbody at a temperature of \sim (12)×104(1-2) \times 10^4 K and a luminosity of \sim (26)×1043(2-6) \times 10^{43} erg s1^{-1}. Interestingly, mid-infrared monitoring observations of NGC 5092 with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer 5--13 yr later show a continuous flux decline. These dramatic variability properties, from the X-ray through UV and optical to infrared, appear to be orderly, suggestive of a stellar tidal disruption event (TDE) by a massive black hole, confirming the postulation by Kanner et al.(2013). This TDE candidate belongs to a rare sample with contemporaneous bright emission detected in the X-ray, UV, and optical, which are later echoed by dust-reprocessed light in the mid-infrared. The black hole has a mass of \sim 5×107M5 \times 10^{7} \rm M_{\odot}, residing in a galaxy that is dominated by a middle-aged stellar population of 2.5 Gyr.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.09066,
  title  = {Multiwavelength Study of an X-ray Tidal Disruption Event Candidate in NGC 5092},
  author = {Dongyue Li and R. D. Saxton and Weimin Yuan and Luming Sun and He-Yang Liu and Ning Jiang and Huaqing Cheng and Hongyan Zhou and S. Komossa and Chichuan Jin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.09066},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

24 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ