A radio jet from the optical and x-ray bright stellar tidal disruption flare ASASSN-14li

S van Velzen; G E Anderson; N C Stone; M Fraser; T Wevers; B D Metzger; P G Jonker; A J van der Horst; T D Staley; A J Mendez; J C A Miller-Jones; S T Hodgkin; H C Campbell; R P Fender

doi:10.1126/science.aad1182

A radio jet from the optical and x-ray bright stellar tidal disruption flare ASASSN-14li

Science. 2016 Jan 1;351(6268):62-5. doi: 10.1126/science.aad1182. Epub 2015 Nov 26.

Authors

S van Velzen¹, G E Anderson², N C Stone³, M Fraser⁴, T Wevers⁵, B D Metzger³, P G Jonker⁶, A J van der Horst⁷, T D Staley⁸, A J Mendez⁹, J C A Miller-Jones¹⁰, S T Hodgkin⁴, H C Campbell⁴, R P Fender⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. sjoert@jhu.edu.
² Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK. International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6845, Australia.
³ Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
⁴ Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK.
⁵ Department of Astrophysics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, Netherlands.
⁶ Department of Astrophysics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, Netherlands. SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, Netherlands.
⁷ Department of Physics, The George Washington University, 725 21st Street NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK.
⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
¹⁰ International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, GPO Box U1987, Perth WA 6845, Australia.

PMID: 26612833
DOI: 10.1126/science.aad1182

Abstract

The tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole leads to a short-lived thermal flare. Despite extensive searches, radio follow-up observations of known thermal stellar tidal disruption flares (TDFs) have not yet produced a conclusive detection. We present a detection of variable radio emission from a thermal TDF, which we interpret as originating from a newly launched jet. The multiwavelength properties of the source present a natural analogy with accretion-state changes of stellar mass black holes, which suggests that all TDFs could be accompanied by a jet. In the rest frame of the TDF, our radio observations are an order of magnitude more sensitive than nearly all previous upper limits, explaining how these jets, if common, could thus far have escaped detection.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.