2024ApJ...962...78W -
Astrophys. J., 962, 78 (2024/February-2)
Rapid Dimming Followed by a State Transition: A Study of the Highly Variable Nuclear Transient AT 2019avd over 1000+ Days.
WANG Y., PASHAM D.R., ALTAMIRANO D., GURPIDE A., CASTRO SEGURA N., MIDDLETON M., JI L., DEL PALACIO S., GUOLO M., GANDHI P., ZHANG S.-N., REMILLARD R., LIN D., MASTERSON M., BALDI R.D., TOMBESI F., MILLER J.M., ZHANG W. and SANNA A.
Abstract (from CDS):
The tidal disruption of a star around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) offers a unique opportunity to study accretion onto an SMBH on a human timescale. We present results from our 1000+ days monitoring campaign of AT 2019avd, a nuclear transient with tidal-disruption-event-like properties, with NICER, Swift, and Chandra. Our primary finding is that approximately 225 days following the peak of the X-ray emission, there is a rapid drop in luminosity exceeding 2 orders of magnitude. This X-ray dropoff is accompanied by X-ray spectral hardening, followed by a plateau phase of 740 days. During this phase, the spectral index decreases from 6.2 ± 1.1 to 2.3 ± 0.4, while the disk temperature remains constant. Additionally, we detect pronounced X-ray variability, with an average fractional rms amplitude of 47%, manifesting over timescales of a few dozen minutes. We propose that this phenomenon may be attributed to intervening clumpy outflows. The overall properties of AT 2019avd suggest that the accretion disk evolves from a super-Eddington to a sub-Eddington luminosity state, possibly associated with a compact jet. This evolution follows a pattern in the hardness-intensity diagram similar to that observed in stellar-mass BHs, supporting the mass invariance of accretion-ejection processes around BHs.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Journal keyword(s):
High energy astrophysics - Black holes - Accretion
Simbad objects:
18
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