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A radio jet from the optical and X-ray bright stellar tidal disruption flare ASASSN-14li.

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Open access
Authors
van Velzen, S.
Anderson, Gemma
Stone, N.
Fraser, M.
Wevers, T.
Metzger, B.
Jonker, P.
van der Horst, A.
Staley, T.
Mendez, A.
Miller-Jones, J.
Hodgkin, S.
Campbell, H.
Fender, R.
Date
2015
Type
Journal Article

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Citation
van Velzen, S. and Anderson, G. and Stone, N. and Fraser, M. and Wevers, T. and Metzger, B. and Jonker, P. et al. 2015. A radio jet from the optical and X-ray bright stellar tidal disruption flare ASASSN-14li. Science: 351 (6268): pp. 62-65.
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Science
DOI
School
Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (Physics)
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Remarks

This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science, 351 (6268): pp. 62-65, 2015, doi: 10.1126/science.aad1182

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Abstract

The tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole leads to a short-lived thermal flare. Despite extensive searches, radio follow-up observations of known thermal stellar tidal disruption flares (TDFs) have not yet produced a conclusive detection. We present a detection of variable radio emission from a thermal TDF, which we interpret as originating from a newly-launched jet. The multi-wavelength properties of the source present a natural analogy with accretion state changes of stellar mass black holes, suggesting all TDFs could be accompanied by a jet. In the rest frame of the TDF, our radio observations are an order of magnitude more sensitive than nearly all previous upper limits, explaining how these jets, if common, could thus far have escaped detection.