VLA Observations Confirm AT 2023mfm as an Off-nuclear Tidal Disruption Event

Abstract

We report new radio observations of the tidal disruption event (TDE) AT 2023mfm, which we identified as a high-confidence candidate in a systematic search for off-nuclear TDEs. High-resolution NSF Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array C-band (6 GHz) imaging resolves two radio sources: one consistent with the host-galaxy nucleus and one offset by $0.651\pm 0.036^{\prime \prime }$ ($1.06\pm 0.06$ kpc), consistent with the Zwicky Transient Facility and Pan-STARRS1 positions of AT 2023mfm. These observations confirm the off-nuclear nature of AT 2023mfm, demonstrating the power of high-resolution radio imaging to validate off-nuclear TDE candidates and reveal hidden off-nuclear massive black holes.

4 pages, 1 figure, published in RNAAS

References in corpus (2)

• CASA, the Common Astronomy Software Applications for Radio Astronomy
• Fundamental scaling relationships revealed in the optical light curves of tidal disruption events