2012A&A...541A.106S

The study of tidal disruption flares from galactic nuclei has historically been hampered by a lack of high quality spectral observations taken around the peak of the outburst. Here we introduce the first results from a program designed to identify tidal disruption events at their peak by making near-real-time comparisons of the flux seen in XMM-Newton slew sources with that seen in ROSAT. Flaring extragalactic sources, which do not appear to be AGN, are monitored with Swift and XMM-Newton to track their temporal and spectral evolution. Timely optical observations are made to monitor the reaction of circumnuclear material to the X-ray flare. SDSS J120136.02+300305.5 was detected in an XMM-Newton slew from June 2010 with a flux 56 times higher than an upper limit from ROSAT, corresponding to L_X∼3x10⁴⁴erg/s. It has the optical spectrum of a quiescent galaxy (z=0.146). Overall the X-ray flux has evolved consistently with the canonical t^–5/3 model, expected for returning stellar debris, fading by a factor ∼300 over 300-days. In detail the source is very variable and became invisible to Swift between 27 and 48 days after discovery, perhaps due to self-absorption. The X-ray spectrum is soft but is not the expected tail of optically thick thermal emission. It may be fit with a Bremsstrahlung or double-power-law model and is seen to soften with time and declining flux. Optical spectra taken 12 days and 11 months after discovery indicate a deficit of material in the broad line and coronal line regions of this galaxy, while a deep radio non-detection implies that a jet was not launched during this event.