Late-time Radio Flares in Tidal Disruption Events

Tatsuya Matsumoto, Tsvi Piran

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Radio monitoring unveiled late (hundreds to a thousand days) radio flares in a significant fraction of tidal disruption events. We propose that these late-time radio flares are a natural outcome if the surrounding density profile flattens outside the Bondi radius. At the Bondi radius, the outflow is optically thin (above a few GHz) to synchrotron self-absorption. As more and more material is swept up, the radio emission rises asymptotically as ∝ t 3 until the outflow begins to decelerate. A detection of such a rise and a late-time maximum constrains the black hole mass and the mass and energy of the radio-emitting outflow. We show that this model can give reasonable fits to some observed light curves, leading to reasonable estimates of the black hole and outflow masses. We also find that the slope of the density profile within the Bondi radius determines whether an early-time (∼102 days) radio peak exists.

Original languageEnglish
Article number49
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume971
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Late-time Radio Flares in Tidal Disruption Events'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this