The Tidal Disruption Event AT2021ehb: Evidence of Relativistic Disk Reflection, and Rapid Evolution of the Disk-Corona System

Abstract

We present X-ray, UV, optical, and radio observations of the nearby ($\approx 78$ Mpc) tidal disruption event (TDE) AT2021ehb/ZTF21aanxhjv during its first 430 days of evolution. AT2021ehb occurs in the nucleus of a galaxy hosting a $\approx 10^7{M}_{\odot }$ black hole ($M_{\mathrm{BH}}$ inferred from host galaxy scaling relations). High-cadence Swift and NICER monitoring reveals a delayed X-ray brightening. The spectrum first undergoes a gradual $\mathrm{soft}\to \mathrm{hard}$ transition and then suddenly turns soft again within 3 days at $\hat{I}´t\approx 272$ days during which the X-ray flux drops by a factor of ten. In the joint NICER+NuSTAR observation ($\hat{I}´t=264$ days, harder state), we observe a prominent non-thermal component up to 30 keV and an extremely broad emission line in the iron K band. The bolometric luminosity of AT2021ehb reaches a maximum of $6.0_{-3.8}^{+10.4}\%L_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ when the X-ray spectrum is the hardest. During the dramatic X-ray evolution, no radio emission is detected, the UV/optical luminosity stays relatively constant, and the optical spectra are featureless. We propose the following interpretations: (i) the $\mathrm{soft}\to \mathrm{hard}$ transition may be caused by the gradual formation of a magnetically dominated corona; (ii) hard X-ray photons escape from the system along solid angles with low scattering optical depth ($\sim$a few) whereas the UV/optical emission is likely generated by reprocessing materials with much larger column density -- the system is highly aspherical; (iii) the abrupt X-ray flux drop may be triggered by the thermal-viscous instability in the inner accretion flow leading to a much thinner disk.

35 pages, 21 figures, accepted by ApJ