English
Related papers

Related papers: Why are Quasiperiodic Eruptions only Found in Low-…

200 papers

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-11-17 Joheen Chakraborty , Erin Kara , Megan Masterson , Margherita Giustini , Giovanni Miniutti , Richard Saxton

``Quasi-periodic eruptions'' (QPE) are recurrent nuclear transients with periods of several hours to almost a day, which thus far have been detected exclusively in the X-ray band. We have shown that many of the key properties of QPE flares…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-11-29 Itai Linial , Brian D. Metzger

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are a recently identified class of X-ray transient associated with tidal disruption events by supermassive black holes, and for which there are multiple possible explanations. In this paper we present a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-01-28 M. Middleton , A. Gurpide , T. M. Kwan , L. Dai , R. Arcodia , J. Chakraborty , T. Dauser , P. C. Fragile , A. Ingram , G. Miniutti , C. Pinto , P. Kosec

Quasi Periodic Eruptions (QPEs) are luminous bursts of soft X-rays recently discovered in galactic nuclei. They repeat on timescales of hours to weeks, superimposed to an otherwise stable quiescent X-ray level, consistent with emission from…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-04 Chiara Maria Allievi , Luca Broggi , Alberto Sesana , Matteo Bonetti

Roughly half of the quasi-periodic eruption (QPE) sources in galactic nuclei exhibit a remarkably regular alternating "long-short'' pattern of recurrence times between consecutive flares. We show that a main-sequence star (brought into the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-09-06 Itai Linial , Brian D. Metzger

Several low--mass galaxy nuclei are observed to produce quasiperiodic eruptions (QPEs). Recently one of these systems, 1ES~1927+654, changed its quasiperiod drastically, from $\sim 18$ minutes to $\sim 7.1$ minutes, over a span of just two…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-05-06 Andrew King

The origin of the recently discovered new class of transients, X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs), remains a puzzle. Due to their periodicity and association with active galactic nuclei (AGN), it is natural to relate these eruptions to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-08-30 Hiromichi Tagawa , Zoltán Haiman

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are repeating soft X-ray bursts from the nuclei of galaxies, tantalizingly proposed to be extreme mass ratio inspirals. Here, we report the discovery of a new galaxy showing X-ray QPEs, the fifth found…

In the past five years, six quasi-periodic X-ray eruption (QPE) sources have been discovered in the nuclei of nearby galaxies. Their origin remains an open question. We present MUSE integral field spectroscopy of five QPE host galaxies to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-06-06 T. Wevers , K. D. French , A. I. Zabludoff , T. Fischer , K. Rowlands , M. Guolo , B. Dalla Barba , R. Arcodia , M. Berton , F. Bian , I. Linial , G. Miniutti , D. R. Pasham

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are recurring soft X-ray transients emerging from the vicinity of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in nearby, low-mass galaxy nuclei; about ten QPE hosts have been identified thus far. Here we report the…

Quasiperiodic eruptions (QPEs), the repeated outbursts observed in soft X-ray bands, have attracted broad interest, but their physical origin is under debate. One of the popular models, the star-disk collision model, suggests that QPEs can…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-27 Wenyuan Guo , Rong-Feng Shen

Quasi-Periodic Eruptions (QPEs) are luminous, recurring X-ray outbursts from galactic nuclei, with timescales of hours to days. While their origin remains uncertain, leading models invoke accretion disk instabilities or the interaction of a…

We present a model that explains some extreme variability phenomena observed in active galactic nuclei (AGN). In this model, an orbiting companion interacts with the accretion disk surrounding the central supermassive black hole (SMBH).…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-06-26 Sierra A. Dodd , Xiaoshan Huang , Shane W. Davis , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

Quasi-periodic eruption (QPE) sources in galactic nuclei are often associated with a stellar object orbiting a supermassive black hole with hours-days period, brought in as an extreme mass-ratio inspiral (EMRI). In the presence of an…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-09-30 Itai Linial , Brian D. Metzger , Eliot Quataert

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are found in the center of five galaxies, where a tidal disruption event (TDE)-like event is also reported in GSN 069 that happened a couple of years before the QPEs. We explain the connection of these…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-07-27 Mengye Wang , Jinjing Yin , Yiqiu Ma , Qingwen Wu

Quasi-Periodic Eruptions (QPEs) are luminous X-ray outbursts recurring on hour timescales, observed from the nuclei of a growing handful of nearby low-mass galaxies. Their physical origin is still debated, and usually modeled as (a)…

Periodic collisions between a star on an inclined orbit around a supermassive black hole and its accretion disk offers a promising explanation for X-ray "quasi-periodic eruptions" (QPEs). Each passage through the disk shocks and compresses…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-10-08 Indrek Vurm , Itai Linial , Brian D. Metzger

In recent years, searches of archival X-ray data have revealed galaxies exhibiting nuclear quasi-periodic eruptions with periods of several hours. These are reminiscent of the tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole, and the…

X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are a novel mode of variability in nearby galactic nuclei whose origin remains unknown. Their multi-wavelength properties are poorly constrained, as studies have focused almost entirely on the X-ray…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-01-24 Thomas Wevers , Muryel Guolo , Sean Lockwood , Andrew Mummery , Dheeraj R. Pasham , Riccardo Arcodia

X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are intense repeating soft X-ray bursts from the nuclei of nearby galaxies. Their physical origin is still largely unconstrained, and several theoretical models have been proposed to date. We present…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-05-31 G. Miniutti , M. Giustini , R. Arcodia , R. D. Saxton , J. Chakraborty , A. M. Read , E. Kara