The First Radio-bright Off-nuclear Tidal Disruption Event AT 2024tvd Reveals the Fastest-evolving Double-peaked Radio Emission

Itai Sfaradi*, Raffaella Margutti, Ryan Chornock, Kate D. Alexander, Brian D. Metzger, Paz Beniamini, Rodolfo Barniol Duran, Yuhan Yao, Assaf Horesh, Wael Farah, Edo Berger, A. J. Nayana, Yvette Cendes, Tarraneh Eftekhari, Rob Fender, Noah Franz, Dave A. Green, Erica Hammerstein, Wenbin Lu, Eli WistonYirmi Bernstein, Joe Bright, Collin T. Christy, Luigi F. Cruz, David R. DeBoer, Walter W. Golay, Adelle J. Goodwin, Mark Gurwell, Garrett K. Keating, Tanmoy Laskar, James C.A. Miller-Jones, Alexander W. Pollak, Ramprasad Rao, Andrew Siemion, Sofia Z. Sheikh, Nadav Shoval, Sjoert van Velzen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We present the first multiepoch broadband radio and millimeter monitoring of an off-nuclear tidal disruption event (TDE) using the Very Large Array, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the Allen Telescope Array, the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array, and the Submillimeter Array. The off-nuclear TDE AT 2024tvd exhibits double-peaked radio light curves and the fastest-evolving radio emission observed from a TDE to date. With respect to the optical discovery date, the first radio flare rises faster than Fν ∼ t9 at Δt = 88-131 days and then decays as fast as Fν ∼ t−6. The emergence of a second radio flare is observed at Δt ≈ 194 days with an initial fast rise of Fν ∼ t18 and an optically thin decline of Fν ∼ t−12. We interpret these observations in the context of a self-absorbed and free-free absorbed synchrotron spectrum, while accounting for both synchrotron and inverse Compton cooling. We find that a single prompt outflow cannot easily explain these observations and that it is likely that either there is only one outflow that was launched at Δt ∼ 80 days or there are two distinct outflows, with the second launched at Δt ∼ 170-190 days. The nature of these outflows, whether sub-, mildly, or ultrarelativistic, is still unclear, and we explore these different scenarios. Finally, we find a temporal coincidence between the launch time of the first radio-emitting outflow and the onset of a power-law component in the X-ray spectrum, attributed to inverse Compton scattering of thermal photons.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberL18
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume992
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Oct 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

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