paper

A Tidal Disruption Flare in Abell 1689 from an Archival X-ray Survey of Galaxy Clusters

arXiv:1008.4140 · doi:10.1088/0004-637X/722/2/1035

Abstract

Theory suggests that a star making a close passage by a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy can under most circumstances be expected to emit a giant flare of radiation as it is disrupted and a portion of the resulting stream of shock-heated stellar debris falls back onto the black hole itself. We examine the first results of an ongoing archival survey of galaxy clusters using Chandra and XMM-selected data, and report a likely tidal disruption flare from SDSS J131122.15-012345.6 in Abell 1689. The flare is observed to vary by a factor of >30 over at least 2 years, to have maximum L_X(0.3-3.0 keV)> 5 x 10^{42} erg s^{-1} and to emit as a blackbody with kT~0.12 keV. From the galaxy population as determined by existing studies of the cluster, we estimate a tidal disruption rate of 1.2 x 10^{-4} galaxy^{-1} year^{-1} if we assume a contribution to the observable rate from galaxies whose range of luminosities corresponds to a central black hole mass (M_bh) between 10^6 and 10^8 M_sun.

24 pages, including 6 figures and 2 tables Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

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