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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Adam IngramORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2024.Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are luminous bursts of soft X-rays from the nuclei of galaxies, repeating on timescales of hours to weeks1–5. The mechanism behind these rare systems is uncertain, but most theories involve accretion disks around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) undergoing instabilities6–8 or interacting with a stellar object in a close orbit9–11. It has been suggested that this disk could be created when the SMBH disrupts a passing star8,11, implying that many QPEs should be preceded by observable tidal disruption events (TDEs). Two known QPE sources show long-term decays in quiescent luminosity consistent with TDEs4,12 and two observed TDEs have exhibited X-ray flares consistent with individual eruptions13,14. TDEs and QPEs also occur preferentially in similar galaxies15. However, no confirmed repeating QPEs have been associated with a spectroscopically confirmed TDE or an optical TDE observed at peak brightness. Here we report the detection of nine X-ray QPEs with a mean recurrence time of approximately 48 h from AT2019qiz, a nearby and extensively studied optically selected TDE16. We detect and model the X-ray, ultraviolet (UV) and optical emission from the accretion disk and show that an orbiting body colliding with this disk provides a plausible explanation for the QPEs.
Author(s): Nicholl M, Pasham DR, Mummery A, Guolo M, Gendreau K, Dewangan GC, Ferrara EC, Remillard R, Bonnerot C, Chakraborty J, Hajela A, Dhillon VS, Gillan AF, Greenwood J, Huber ME, Janiuk A, Salvesen G, van Velzen S, Aamer A, Alexander KD, Angus CR, Arzoumanian Z, Auchettl K, Berger E, de Boer T, Cendes Y, Chambers KC, Chen T-W, Chornock R, Fulton MD, Gao H, Gillanders JH, Gomez S, Gompertz BP, Fabian AC, Herman J, Ingram A, Kara E, Laskar T, Lawrence A, Lin C-C, Lowe TB, Magnier EA, Margutti R, McGee SL, Minguez P, Moore T, Nathan E, Oates SR, Patra KC, Ramsden P, Ravi V, Ridley EJ, Sheng X, Smartt SJ, Smith KW, Srivastav S, Stein R, Stevance HF, Turner SGD, Wainscoat RJ, Weston J, Wevers T, Young DR
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature
Year: 2024
Volume: 634
Pages: 804–808
Print publication date: 24/10/2024
Online publication date: 09/10/2024
Acceptance date: 05/09/2024
Date deposited: 29/10/2024
ISSN (print): 0028-0836
ISSN (electronic): 1476-4687
Publisher: Nature Research
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08023-6
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08023-6
Data Access Statement: All NICER, Chandra and Swift data presented here are public and can be found in the NASA archives at https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/W3Browse/w3browse.pl. HST data are public through the MAST archive at https://archive.stsci.edu/missions-and-data/hst. The reduced light-curve data from Figs. 1 and 4 are available on GitHub at https://github.com/mnicholl/AT2019qiz. Code availability Data reduction and X-ray spectral fitting were performed using standard, publicly available codes (Methods). Code used for the relativistic disk model is described by refs. 19,25. Author A.M. is working towards releasing a user-friendly version of this code publicly through GitHub; the current version will be shared on request.
PubMed id: 39385028
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