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Related papers: Extreme Accretion Events: TDEs and Changing-Look A…

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We performed a systematic search for stellar tidal disruption events (TDE) by looking for X-ray sources that were detected during the ROSAT All Sky Survey and faded by more than an order of magnitude over the next two decades according to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-22 Ildar Khabibullin , Sergey Sazonov

A long-standing question is whether active galactic nuclei (AGN) vary like Galactic black hole systems when appropriately scaled up by mass (refs 1-3). If so, we can then determine how AGN should behave on cosmological timescales by…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-05-05 I M McHardy , E Koerding , C Knigge , P Uttley , R P Fender

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are an important way to probe the properties of stellar populations surrounding supermassive black holes. Observed spectra of several TDEs, such as ASASSN-14li, show high nitrogen to carbon abundance ratios,…

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been detected in the centers of most nearby massive galaxies. Galaxies today are the products of billions of years of galaxy mergers, but also billions of years of SMBH activity as active galactic…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2012-03-05 Sandor Van Wassenhove , Marta Volonteri , Lucio Mayer , Massimo Dotti , Jillian Bellovary , Simone Callegari

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are a class of transients that occur when a star is destroyed by the tides of a massive black hole (MBH). Their rates encode valuable MBH demographic information, but this can only be extracted if accurate TDE…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-31 Christian H. Hannah , Nicholas C. Stone , Anil C. Seth , Sjoert van Velzen

The strong tidal force in a supermassive black hole's (SMBH) vicinity, coupled with a higher stellar density at the center of a galaxy, make it an ideal location to study the interaction between stars and black holes. Two stars moving near…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-04-17 Betty X. Hu , Avi Loeb

We present a multi-wavelength analysis of 14 tidal disruption events (TDEs)-including an off-nuclear event associated with an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy-selected for having available thermal X-ray spectra during their late-time UV/optical…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-03 M. Guolo , A. Mummery , S. van Velzen , S. Gezari , M. Nicholl , Y. Yao , M. Karmen , Y. Ajay , T. Wevers , N. LeBaron , R. Chornock

During a stellar tidal disruption event (TDE), an accretion disk forms as stellar debris returns to the disruption site and circularizes. Rather than being confined within the circularizing radius, the disk can spread to larger radii to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2014-03-11 Rong-Feng Shen , Christopher D. Matzner

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) occur when a star crosses the tidal radius of a black hole (BH) and is ripped apart, providing a powerful way to probe dormant BHs over a wide mass range. In this study, we present our late-time observations…

The discovery of changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs), with appearance and disappearance of broad emission lines and/or with strong variation of line-of-sight column density within a few years, challenges the AGN unification…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-12-10 Hao liu , Qingwen Wu , Bing Lyu , Zhen Yan

Disks of gas accreting onto supermassive black holes are thought to power active galactic nuclei (AGN). Stars may form in gravitationally unstable regions of these disks, or may be captured from nuclear star clusters. Because of the dense…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-08-04 Alexander J. Dittmann , Matteo Cantiello , Adam S. Jermyn

X-ray transience is the most extreme form of variability observed in AGN or normal non-active galaxies. While factors of 2-3 on timescales of days to years are quite common among AGN, X-ray transients appear only once and vanish from the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 D. Grupe

We present X-ray, UV, optical, and radio observations of the nearby ($\approx78$ Mpc) tidal disruption event (TDE) AT2021ehb/ZTF21aanxhjv during its first 430 days of evolution. AT2021ehb occurs in the nucleus of a galaxy hosting a $\approx…

Stars grazing supermassive black holes on bound orbits may produce periodic flares over many passages, known as repeating partial tidal disruption events (TDEs). Here, we present 3D hydrodynamic simulations of sun-like stars over multiple…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-12-30 Chang Liu , Ricardo Yarza , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) occur when stars are destroyed by supermassive black holes and are among the brightest nuclear transients. It has been thought that strong relativistic effects rapidly dissipate orbital energy and produce…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-05 Ho-Sang Chan , Taeho Ryu , Julian Krolik , Tsvi Piran

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) occurred in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are a special class of sources with outstanding scientific significance. TDEs can generate ultrafast winds, which should almost inevitably collide with the preexisting…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-03-03 Guobin Mou , Liming Dou , Ning Jiang , Tinggui Wang , Fulai Guo , Wei Wang , Hu Wang , Xinwen Shu , Zhicheng He , Ruiyu Zhang , Luming Sun

The changing-look active galactic nucleus (CL-AGN), an extraordinary subpopulation of supermassive black holes, has attracted growing attention for understanding its nature. We present an analysis of the spectral properties of 203…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-13 Yu-Heng Shen , Kai-Xing Lu , Wei-Jian Guo , Sha-Sha Li , Hai-Cheng Feng , Zhang Yue , Wen-Zhe Xi , Jian-Guo Wang , Jin-Ming Bai

Accretion disks around stellar-mass black holes offer unique opportunities to study the fundamental physics of standard thin disks, super-Eddington disks, and structure that may be connected to flux variability. These local analogues of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-03-12 J. M. Miller , D. Barret , E. Cackett , M. Diaz Trigo , C. Done , E. Gallo , J. Kaastra , C. Motch , C. Pinto , G. Ponti , N. Webb , A. Zoghbi

A star crossing the tidal radius of a supermassive black hole will be spectacularly ripped apart with an accompanying burst of radiation. A few tens of such tidal disruption events (TDEs) have now been identified in the optical wavelengths,…

Context. Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) challenge the unified model of AGNs and offer key insights into the physics of the accretion processes of super-massive black holes. While systematic spectroscopic comparisons have…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-26 Litao Zhu , Zhongxiang Wang , Alok C. Gupta , P. U. Devanand , Ruoheng Yang , Qiangmeng Huang , Man Lang , Jiawen Li