Revealing a multi-zone circumnuclear dust response in UGC~11487 through phase-resolved WISE W1--W2 diagnostics
Abstract
Mid-infrared (MIR) flares provide a direct probe of dust reprocessing in obscured tidal disruption event (TDE) candidates when the primary optical or ultraviolet flare is weak, missed, or strongly attenuated. We present a phase-resolved analysis of the WISE/NEOWISE W1-W2 evolution of the MIR-selected TDE candidate UGC 11487/WTP14adeqka over 2014-2024. We combine timing, colour, and flux diagnostics with phenomenological modelling, hydrodynamically motivated clumpy dust-echo calculations, and an aperture-matched ultraviolet-to-radio spectral energy distribution of the host. The decade-long flare shows a delayed and broader W2 response, colour hysteresis, and cooling from approximately 900 K to 500-600 K. Positive-fluence centroids yield a preferred delay of d, corresponding to pc. The effective infrared luminosity peaks at approximately erg s, and the integrated infrared energy is erg. A single self-similar MIR response is strongly disfavoured, with Delta BIC = 281.7, while the preferred compact description is a two-component phenomenological model. Representative hydro-clumpy calculations reproduce the empirical diagnostics in a structured, multi-zone dust-response scenario. The host is a moderately star-forming isolated barred disc without a dominant persistent active galactic nucleus component. These results support an obscured TDE-like accretion transient reprocessed by structured circumnuclear dust and show that phase-resolved WISE diagnostics can recover characteristic sub-parsec response scales in obscured accretion-powered nuclear transients.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.17815,
title = {Revealing a multi-zone circumnuclear dust response in UGC~11487 through phase-resolved WISE W1--W2 diagnostics},
author = {I. O. Izviekova and O. V. Kompaniiets and I. B. Vavilova},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.17815},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
20 pages, 14 figures, submited to A&A