The superluminous transient ASASSN-15lh as a tidal disruption event from a Kerr black hole

By G. Leloudas, Morgan Fraser, Nicholas C. Stone, Sanne G M van Velzen, Peter G. Jonker, I. Arcavi, C. Fremling, J. Maund, S. Smartt, T. Krìhler and 40 more. Nature Astronomy, 2016

170 citations recorded by the source corpus.

When a star passes within the tidal radius of a supermassive black hole, it will be torn apart1. For a star with the mass of the Sun (M⊙) and a non-spinning black hole with a mass <108M⊙, the tidal radius lies outside the black hole event horizon2 and the disruption results in a luminous flare3–6. Here we report observations over a period of ten months of a transient, hitherto interpreted7 as a superluminous supernova8. Our data show that the transient rebrightened substantially in the ultraviolet and that the spectrum went through three different spectroscopic phases without ever becoming nebular. Our observations are more consistent with a tidal disruption event than a superluminous supernova because of the temperature evolution6, the presence of highly ionized CNO gas in the line of sight9 and our improved localization of the transient in the nucleus of a passive galaxy, where the presence of massive stars is highly unlikely10,11. While the supermassive black hole has a mass >108M⊙12,13, a star with the same mass as the Sun could be disrupted outside the event horizon if the black hole were spinning rapidly14. The rapid spin and high black hole mass can explain the high luminosity of this event. Transient object ASASSN-15lh was previously cast as the most luminous supernova ever discovered. Now, however, there is convincing evidence that its flare was a tidal disruption event: a rapidly-spinning black hole tearing apart a neighbouring star.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7388b23548dc1d7e8b629b78a28280e726f0e568

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Citations in the corpus

Weighing Black Holes Using Tidal Disruption Events (2018, background): “Another potential example of a two-component TDE in the literature is ASASSN-15lh (Nicholls et al. 2015; Leloudas et al. 2016).”
PS16dtm: A Tidal Disruption Event in a Narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxy (2017, background): “…(Type II) and without hydrogen (Type I) and tidal disruption events (TDEs; Gezari et al. 2009; van Velzen et al. 2011; Chornock et al. 2014; Komossa 2015), as well as some events that defy a clear classification (e.g. ASASSN-15lh; Dong et al. 2016; Margutti et al. 2016; Leloudas et al. 2016).”
New Physical Insights about Tidal Disruption Events from a Comprehensive Observational Inventory at X-Ray Wavelengths (2016, methodology): “However, using 10 months of multiwavelength data, Leloudas et al. (2016) showed that the properties of this source is more consistent with a TDE rather than a superluminous supernova based on its temperature evolution, the presence of CNO gas along the line of sight and its location being…”