TY - JOUR
T1 - Thermal Electrons in the Radio Afterglow of Relativistic Tidal Disruption Event ZTF22aaajecp/AT 2022cmc
AU - Rhodes, Lauren
AU - Margalit, Ben
AU - Bright, Joe S.
AU - Dykaar, Hannah
AU - Fender, Rob
AU - Green, David A.
AU - Haggard, Daryl
AU - Horesh, Assaf
AU - Van der Horst, Alexander J.
AU - Hughes, Andrew K.
AU - Mooley, Kunal
AU - Sfaradi, Itai
AU - Titterington, David
AU - Williams-Baldwin, David
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2025/10/10
Y1 - 2025/10/10
N2 - A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star travels too close to a supermassive black hole. In some cases, accretion of the disrupted material onto the black hole launches a relativistic jet. In this paper, we present a long-term observing campaign to study the radio and submillimeter emission associated with the fifth jetted/relativistic TDE: AT 2022cmc. Our campaign reveals a long-lived counterpart. We fit three different models to our data: a nonthermal jet, a spherical outflow consisting of both thermal and nonthermal electrons, and a jet with thermal and nonthermal electrons. We find that the data are best described by a relativistic spherical outflow propagating into an environment with a density profile following R−1.8. Comparison of AT 2022cmc to other TDEs finds agreement in the density profile of the environment but also that AT 2022cmc is twice as energetic as the other well-studied relativistic TDE, Swift J1644. Our observations of AT 2022cmc allow a thermal electron population to be inferred for the first time in a jetted transient, providing new insights into the microphysics of relativistic transients jets.
AB - A tidal disruption event (TDE) occurs when a star travels too close to a supermassive black hole. In some cases, accretion of the disrupted material onto the black hole launches a relativistic jet. In this paper, we present a long-term observing campaign to study the radio and submillimeter emission associated with the fifth jetted/relativistic TDE: AT 2022cmc. Our campaign reveals a long-lived counterpart. We fit three different models to our data: a nonthermal jet, a spherical outflow consisting of both thermal and nonthermal electrons, and a jet with thermal and nonthermal electrons. We find that the data are best described by a relativistic spherical outflow propagating into an environment with a density profile following R−1.8. Comparison of AT 2022cmc to other TDEs finds agreement in the density profile of the environment but also that AT 2022cmc is twice as energetic as the other well-studied relativistic TDE, Swift J1644. Our observations of AT 2022cmc allow a thermal electron population to be inferred for the first time in a jetted transient, providing new insights into the microphysics of relativistic transients jets.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105018879484
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ae03b6
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ae03b6
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AN - SCOPUS:105018879484
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 992
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 146
ER -