An Unusual Mid-infrared Flare in a Type 2 AGN: An Obscured Turning-on AGN or Tidal Disruption Event?

We report the discovery of an exceptional MIR flare in a Type 2 AGN, SDSS J165726.81+234528.1, at z = 0.059. This object brightened by 3 mag in the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) W1 and W2 bands between 2015 and 2017 (and has been fading since 2018), without significant changes (≲0.2 mag) in the optical over the same period of time. Based on the WISE light curves and near-IR imaging, the flare is more significant at longer wavelengths, suggesting an origin of hot dust emission. The estimated black hole mass (∼10^6.5 M _⊙) from different methods places its peak bolometric luminosity around the Eddington limit. The high luminosity of the MIR flare and its multiyear timescale suggest that it most likely originated from reprocessed dust radiation in an extended torus surrounding the AGN, instead of from stellar explosions. The MIR color variability is consistent with known changing-look AGN and tidal disruption events (TDEs), but inconsistent with normal supernovae. We suggest that it is a turning-on Type 2 AGN or TDE, where the optical variability is obscured by the dust torus during the transition. This MIR flare event reveals a population of dramatic nuclear transients that are missed in the optical.