UV and optical LCs of the TDE AT2021ehb

We present X-ray, UV, optical, and radio observations of the nearby (~78Mpc) tidal disruption event AT2021ehb/ZTF21aanxhjv during its first 430 days of evolution. AT2021ehb occurs in the nucleus of a galaxy hosting a ~10^7^M_{sun} black hole (MBH inferred from host galaxy scaling relations). High-cadence Swift and Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) monitoring reveals a delayed X-ray brightening. The spectrum first undergoes a gradual soft -> hard transition and then suddenly turns soft again within 3 days at {delta}t~272d during which the X-ray flux drops by a factor of 10. In the joint NICER+NuSTAR observation ({delta}t=264d, harder state), we observe a prominent nonthermal component up to 30keV and an extremely broad emission line in the iron K band. The bolometric luminosity of AT2021ehb reaches a maximum of 6.0-3.8_^+10.4^%L_Edd_ when the X-ray spectrum is the hardest. During the dramatic X-ray evolution, no radio emission is detected, the UV/optical luminosity stays relatively constant, and the optical spectra are featureless. We propose the following interpretations: (i) the soft -> hard transition may be caused by the gradual formation of a magnetically dominated corona; (ii) hard X-ray photons escape from the system along solid angles with low scattering optical depth (~a few) whereas the UV/optical emission is likely generated by reprocessing materials with much larger column density-the system is highly aspherical; and (iii) the abrupt X-ray flux drop may be triggered by the thermal-viscous instability in the inner accretion flow, leading to a much thinner disk.

Identifier
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/937/8
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/937/8
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/937/8
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/937/8
Provenance
Creator Yao Y.; Lu W.; Guolo M.; Pasham D.R.; Gezari S.; Gilfanov M.,Gendreau K.C.; Harrison F.; Cenko S.B.; Kulkarni S.R.; Miller J.M.,Walton D.J.; Garcia J.A.; van Velzen S.; Alexander K.D.,Miller-Jones J.C.A.; Nicholl M.; Hammerstein E.; Medvedev P.; Stern D.,Ravi V.; Sunyaev R.; Bloom J.S.; Graham M.J.; Kool E.C.; Mahabal A.A.,Masci F.J.; Purdum J.; Rusholme B.; Sharma Y.; Smith R.; Sollerman J.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2024
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics