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Register a new userFlows of X-ray gas reveal the disruption of a star by a massive black hole
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Tidal forces close to massive black holes can violently disrupt stars that make a close approach. These extreme events are discovered via bright X-ray and optical/UV flares in galactic centers. Prior studies based on modeling decaying flux trends have been able to estimate broad properties, such as the mass accretion rate. Here we report the detection of flows of highly ionized X-ray gas in high-resolution X-ray spectra of a nearby tidal disruption event. Variability within the absorption-dominated spectra indicates that the gas is relatively close to the black hole. Narrow line widths indicate that the gas does not stretch over a large range of radii, giving a low volume filling factor. Modest outflow speeds of a few hundred kilometers per second are observed, significantly below the escape speed from the radius set by variability. The gas flow is consistent with a rotating wind from the inner, super-Eddington region of a nascent accretion disk, or with a filament of disrupted stellar gas near to the apocenter of an elliptical orbit. Flows of this sort are predicted by fundamental analytical theory and more recent numerical simulations.
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Aims: A strong, hard X-ray flare was discovered (IGR J12580+0134) by INTEGRAL in 2011, and is associated to NGC 4845, a Seyfert 2 galaxy never detected at high-energy previously. To understand what happened we observed this event in the X-ray band on several occasions. Methods: Follow-up observations with XMM-Newton, Swift, and MAXI are presented together with the INTEGRAL data. Long and short term variability are analysed and the event wide band spectral shape modelled. Results: The spectrum of the source can be described with an absorbed (N_H ~ 7x10^22 cm^{-2}) power law (Gamma simeq 2.2), characteristic of an accreting source, plus a soft X-ray excess, likely to be of diffuse nature. The hard X-ray flux increased to maximum in a few weeks and decreased over a year, with the evolution expected for a tidal disruption event. The fast variations observed near the flare maximum allowed us to estimate the mass of the central black hole in NGC 4845 as ~ 3x10^5 Msun. The observed flare corresponds to the disruption of about 10% of an object with a mass of 14-30 Jupiter. The hard X-ray emission should come from a corona forming around the accretion flow close to the black hole. This is the first tidal event where such a corona has been observed.
We study the final stages of the evolution of a binary system consisted of a black hole and a white dwarf star. We implement the quantum hydrodynamic equations and carry out numerical simulations. As a model of a white dwarf star, we consider a zero temperature droplet of attractively interacting degenerate atomic bosons and spin-polarized atomic fermions. Such mixtures are investigated experimentally nowadays. We find that the white dwarf star is stripped off its mass while passing the periastron. Due to nonlinear effects, the accretion disk originated from the white dwarf becomes fragmented and the onset of a quantum turbulence with giant quantized vortices present in the bosonic component of the accretion disk is observed. The binary system ends its life in a spectacular way, revealing quantum features underlying the white dwarf stars structure. We find a charged mass, falling onto a black hole, could be responsible for recently discovered ultraluminous X-ray bursts. The simulations show that the final passage of a white dwarf near a black hole can cause a gamma-ray burst.
Optical transient surveys have led to the discovery of dozens of stellar tidal disruption events (TDEs) by massive black hole in the centers of galaxies. Despite extensive searches, X-ray follow-up observations have produced no or only weak X-ray detections in most of them. Here we report the discovery of delayed X-ray brightening around 140 days after the optical outburst in the TDE OGLE16aaa, followed by several flux dips during the decay phase. These properties are unusual for standard TDEs and could be explained by the presence of supermassive black hole binary or patchy obscuration. In either scenario, the X-rays can be produced promptly after the disruption but are blocked in the early phase, possibly by a radiation-dominated ejecta which leads to the bulk of optical and ultraviolet emission. Our findings imply that the reprocessing is important in the TDE early evolution, and X-ray observations are promising in revealing supermassive black hole binaries.
We consider misaligned accretion discs formed after tidal disruption events occurring when a star encounters a supermassive rotating black hole. We use the linear theory of warped accretion discs to find the disc shape when the stream produced by the disrupted star provides a source of mass and angular momentum that is misaligned with the black hole. The evolution of the surface density and aspect ratio is found from a one dimensional vertically averaged model. We extend previous work which assumed a quasi-stationary disc to allow unrestricted dynamical propagation of disc tilt and twist through time dependent backgrounds. We consider a smaller value of the viscosity parameter, $alpha =0.01,$ finding the dynamics varies significantly. At early times the disc inclination is found to be nearly uniform at small radii where the aspect ratio is large. However, since torques arise from the Lense-Thirring effect and the stream there is non uniform precession. We propose a simple model for this requiring only the background surface density and aspect ratio. At these times the $alpha sim 0.01$ disc exhibits a new feature. An inclined hot inner region joins an outer low inclination cool region via a thin transition front propagating outwards with a speed exceeding that of bending waves in the cool region. These waves accumulate where the propagation speeds match producing an inclination spike separating inner and outer discs. At late times a sequence of quasi-stationary configurations approximates disc shapes at small radii. We discuss observational implications of our results.
We studied the outburst evolution and timing properties of the recently discovered X-ray transient MAXI J1348-630 as observed with NICER. We produced the fundamental diagrams commonly used to trace the spectral evolution, and power density spectra to study the fast X-ray variability. The main outburst evolution of MAXI J1348-630 is similar to that commonly observed in black hole transients. The source evolved from the hard state, through hard- and soft-intermediate states, into the soft state in the outburst rise, and back to the hard state in reverse during the outburst decay. At the end of the outburst, MAXI J1348-630 underwent two reflares with peak fluxes ~1 and ~2 orders of magnitude fainter than the main outburst, respectively. During the reflares, the source remained in the hard state only, without undergoing any state transitions, which is similar to the so-called failed outbursts. Different types of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are observed at different phases of the outburst. Based on our spectral-timing results, we conclude that MAXI J1348-630 is a black hole candidate.
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