LONG FADING MID-INFRARED EMISSION IN TRANSIENT CORONAL LINE EMITTERS: DUST ECHO OF A TIDAL DISRUPTION FLARE

ABSTRACT The sporadic accretion following the tidal disruption of a star by a super-massive black hole (TDE) leads to a bright UV and soft X-ray flare in the galactic nucleus. The gas and dust surrounding the black hole responses to such a flare with an echo in emission lines and infrared emission....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2016-12, Vol.832 (2), p.188
Main Authors: Dou, Liming, Wang, Ting-gui, Jiang, Ning, Yang, Chenwei, Lyu, Jianwei, Zhou, Hongyan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysics
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
black hole physics
BLACK HOLES
COSMIC DUST
Deposition
DETECTION
Disruption
Dust
EMISSION
Emission lines
Emissions
Emitters
Fading
Galactic nuclei
GALAXIES
galaxies: nuclei
GALAXY NUCLEI
Infrared emissions
Infrared signatures
infrared: galaxies
LUMINOSITY
MASS
SOFT X RADIATION
Soft x rays
STARS
Supermassive black holes
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Summary:ABSTRACT The sporadic accretion following the tidal disruption of a star by a super-massive black hole (TDE) leads to a bright UV and soft X-ray flare in the galactic nucleus. The gas and dust surrounding the black hole responses to such a flare with an echo in emission lines and infrared emission. In this paper, we report the detection of long fading mid-IR emission lasting up to 14 years after the flare in four TDE candidates with transient coronal lines using the WISE public data release. We estimate that the reprocessed mid-IR luminosities are in the range between and erg s−1 and dust temperature in the range of 570-800 K when WISE first detected these sources three to five years after the flare. Both luminosity and dust temperature decrease with time. We interpret the mid-IR emission as the infrared echo of the tidal disruption flare. We estimate the UV luminosity at the peak flare to be 1 to 30 times 1044 erg s−1 and that for warm dust masses to be in the range of 0.05-1.3 within a few parsecs. Our results suggest that the mid-infrared echo is a general signature of TDE in the gas-rich environment.
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
DOI:10.3847/0004-637X/832/2/188