Related papers: A likely decade-long sustained tidal disruption ev…
The extreme extragalactic sources known as Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULX) represent a unique testing environment for compact objects population studies and the accretion process. Their nature has long been disputed. Their luminosity,…
Recently two fast X-ray transients (XT1 and XT2) have been reported from the search in the Chandra Deep Field (CDF) data. Each transient shows an initial plateau lasting around hundreds to thousands seconds followed by a rapid decay in the…
X-ray Quasi-Periodic Eruptions (QPEs) are a recently discovered phenomenon associated with supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. They are high amplitude soft X-ray flares that recur on timescales of hours, but what causes…
The optical spectral energy distributions of two tidal disruption flares identified by van Velzen et al. (2011) in archival SDSS data, are found to be well-fit by a thin-accretion-disk model. Furthermore, the inferred Supermassive Black…
One of the main challenges of current tidal disruption events (TDEs) studies is that emission arising from AGN activity may potentially mimic the expected X-ray emission of a TDE. Here we compare the X-ray properties of TDEs and AGN to…
We present evidence from Beppo-SAX and XMM-Newton of extreme X-ray variability in the high luminosity radio-quiet quasar PDS 456, the most luminous known AGN at z<0.3. Repeated X-ray flaring is found in PDS 456, over the duration of the 340…
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) can potentially probe low-mass black holes in host galaxies that might not adhere to bulge or stellar-dispersion relationships. At least initially, TDEs can also reveal super-Eddington accretion. X-ray…
X-ray flares have been discovered in black hole systems, such as gamma-ray bursts, the tidal disruption event Swift J1644+57, the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A$^*$ at the center of our Galaxy, and some active galactic nuclei. Their…
Two \textit{NuSTAR} observations of the luminous X-ray pulsar LMC X-4 in October and November 2015 captured several bright accretion flares from this source, which has a long history of stable pulse and superorbital behavior. We present a…
Hyperluminous supersoft X-ray sources, such as bright extragalactic sources characterized by particularly soft X-ray spectra, offer a unique opportunity to study accretion onto supermassive black holes in extreme conditions. Examples of…
A black hole can launch a powerful relativistic jet after it tidally disrupts a star. If this jet fortuitously aligns with our line of sight, the overall brightness is Doppler boosted by several orders of magnitude. Consequently, such…
A likely tidal disruption of a star by the intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) of a dwarf galaxy was recently identified in association with Abell 1795. Without deep spectroscopy for this very faint object, however, the possibility of a…
Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) provide a unique opportunities to probe the geometry and energetics of super-Eddington accretion. The radiative processes involved in super-Eddington accretion are not well understood, and so studying…
Tidal disruption events provide a unique probe of quiescent black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies. The next generation of synoptic surveys will yield a large sample of flares from the tidal disruption of stars by massive black holes…
After the destruction of the star during a tidal disruption event (TDE), the cataclysmic encounter between a star and the supermassive black hole (SMBH) of a galaxy, approximately half of the original stellar debris falls back onto the hole…
Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are believed to be stellar mass black holes or neutron stars accreting beyond the Eddington limit. Determining the nature of the compact object and the accretion mode from broadband spectroscopy is…
For thermonuclear flashes to occur on neutron-star surfaces, fuel must have been accreted from a donor star. However, sometimes flashes are seen from transient binary systems when they are thought to be in their quiescent phase, during…
We report on the spectral behavior of the first Galactic ultraluminous X-ray pulsar Swift J0243.6+6124 with NuSTAR observations during its 2017-2018 outburst. At sub-Eddington levels, the source spectrum is characterized by three emission…
In many X-ray point sources on the sky, the X-ray emission arises because hydrogen and/or helium is accreted onto a neutron star from a nearby donor star. When this matter settles on the neutron star surface, it will undergo nuclear fusion.…
Tidal disruption events are rare and diverse transients that occur when a star is torn apart by a supermassive black hole and accreted, which can result in a supersoft X-ray thermal transient. Here, we present nine tidal disruption event…