Abstract
We present a detailed analysis of AT 2020nov, a tidal disruption event (TDE) in the center of its host galaxy, located at a redshift of z = 0.083. AT 2020nov exhibits unique features, including double-peaked Balmer emission lines, a broad UV/optical flare, and a peak log luminosity in the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) estimated at ∼ 45.6 6 − 0.33 + 0.10 erg s − 1 . A late-time X-ray flare was also observed, reaching an absorbed luminosity of 1.67 × 1043 erg s−1 approximately 300 days after the UV/optical peak. Multiwavelength coverage, spanning optical, UV, X-ray, and mid-infrared (MIR) bands, reveals a complex spectral energy distribution (SED) that includes MIR flaring indicative of dust echoes, suggesting a dust covering fraction consistent with typical TDEs. Spectral modeling indicates the presence of an extended, quiescent disk around the central supermassive black hole with a radius of ∼ 5.0 6 − 0.77 + 0.59 × 1 0 4 R g . The multicomponent SED model, which includes a significant EUV component, suggests that the primary emission from the TDE is reprocessed by this extended disk, producing the observed optical and MIR features. The lack of strong active galactic nuclei signatures in the host galaxy, combined with the quiescent disk structure, highlights AT 2020nov as a rare example of a TDE occurring in a galaxy with a dormant but extended preexisting accretion structure.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 28 |
| Journal | Astrophysical Journal |
| Volume | 983 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | Apr 2 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 10 2025 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science
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- 10.3847/1538-4357/adb974License: CC BY
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In: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 983, No. 1, 28, 10.04.2025.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - AT 2020nov
T2 - Evidence for Disk Reprocessing in a Rare Tidal Disruption Event
AU - Earl, Nicholas
AU - French, K. Decker
AU - Ramirez-Ruiz, Enrico
AU - Auchettl, Katie
AU - Raimundo, Sandra I.
AU - Davis, Kyle W.
AU - Masterson, Megan
AU - Arcavi, Iair
AU - Lu, Wenbin
AU - Baldassare, Vivienne F.
AU - Coulter, David A.
AU - de Boer, Thomas
AU - Drout, Maria R.
AU - Dykaar, Hannah
AU - Foley, Ryan J.
AU - Gall, Christa
AU - Gao, Hua
AU - Huber, Mark E.
AU - Jones, David O.
AU - Langeroodi, Danial
AU - Lin, Chien Cheng
AU - Magnier, Eugene A.
AU - Mockler, Brenna
AU - Shepherd, Margaret
AU - Verrico, Margaret E.
N1 - Pan-STARRS is a project of the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii, and is supported by the NASA SSO Near Earth Observation Program under grant Nos. 80NSSC18K0971, NNX14AM74G, NNX12AR65G, NNX13AQ47G, NNX08AR22G, and 80NSSC21K1572, and by the State of Hawaii. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) and the PS1 public science archive have been made possible through contributions by the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, the Queen\u2019s University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, STScI, NASA under grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, NSF grant AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. N.E., K.D.F., M.E.V., and M.S. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST 22-06164. E.R.-R. thanks the Heising-Simons Foundation, NSF (AST-2150255 and AST-2307710), Swift (grant Nos. 80NSSC21K1409 and 80NSSC19K1391), and Chandra (22-0142) for support. S.I.R. acknowledges support by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the UK Research and Innovation via grant reference ST/Y002644/1. The UCSC team is supported in part by NASA grant No. 80NSSC20K0953, NSF grant AST-1815935, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and by a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to R.J.F. I.A. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 852097), from the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 2752/19), from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF; grant No. 2018166), and from the Pazy foundation (grant No. 216312). M.R.D. acknowledges support from the NSERC through grant No. RGPIN-2019-06186, the Canada Research Chairs Program, and the Dunlap Institute at the University of Toronto. C.G. is supported by a VILLUM FONDEN Young Investigator Grant (project No. 25501). D.L. was supported by research grants VIL16599 and VIL54489 from VILLUM FONDEN. M.S. acknowledges support from the Illinois Space Grant Consortium. M.E.V. acknowledges support from the Illinois Space Grant Consortium and the Center for Astrophysical Surveys Graduate Fellowship. This research was supported in part by grant NSF PHY-2309135 to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). Parts of this research were supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) through project No. DE230101069. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. 2206165. The Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) and its research infrastructure is supported by the European Research Council under the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (ERC Grant Agreement 101002652, PI: K. Mandel), the Heising-Simons Foundation (2018-0913, PI: R. Foley; 2018-0911, PI: R. Margutti), NASA (NNG17PX03C, PI: R. Foley), NSF (AST\u20131720756, AST-1815935, PI: R. Foley; AST\u20131909796, AST-1944985, PI: R. Margutti), the David & Lucille Packard Foundation (PI: R. Foley), VILLUM FONDEN (project 16599, PI: J. Hjorth), and the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys (CAPS) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A subset of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory. NASA Keck time is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. A major upgrade of the Kast spectrograph on the Shane 3 m telescope at Lick Observatory was made possible through generous gifts from the Heising-Simons Foundation as well as William and Marina Kast. Research at Lick Observatory is partially supported by a generous gift from Google. Based in part on observations obtained at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Minist\u00E9rio da Ci\u00EAncia, Tecnologia e Inova\u00E7\u00F5es (MCTI/LNA) do Brasil, the US NSF\u2019s NOIRLab, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU). This work makes use of observations from the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network. We acknowledge the use of public data from the Swift data archive. Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope 48-inch and the 60-inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project. ZTF is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant Nos. AST-1440341 and AST-2034437, and a collaboration including Caltech, IPAC, the Weizmann Institute for Science, the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron and Humboldt University, the TANGO Consortium of Taiwan, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Trinity College Dublin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and IN2P3, France. Operations are conducted by COO, IPAC, and UW. This research is based on observations made with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, obtained from the MAST data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5\u201326555. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. YSE-PZ was developed by the UC Santa Cruz Transients Team. The UCSC team is supported in part by NASA grant Nos. NNG17PX03C, 80NSSC19K1386, and 80NSSC20K0953; NSF grants AST-1518052, AST-1815935, and AST-1911206; the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to R.J.F.; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellowships and a NASA Einstein Fellowship, as administered through the NASA Hubble Fellowship program and grant No. HST-HF2-51462.001, to D.O.J.; and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, administered through grant DGE-1339067, to D.A.C. Our analysis of AT 2020nov makes extensive use of the transient survey management platform YSE-PZ (D. O. Jones et al. ; D. A. Coulter et al. , ). YSE-PZ was developed by the UC Santa Cruz Transients Team with support from The UCSC team and is supported in part by NASA grants NNG17PX03C, 80NSSC19K1386, and 80NSSC20K0953; NSF grants AST-1518052, AST-1815935, and AST-1911206; the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to R. J. Foley; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellowships and a NASA Einstein fellowship, as administered through the NASA Hubble Fellowship program and grant HST-HF2-51462.001, to D. O. Jones; and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, administered through grant No. DGE-1339067, to D. A. Coulter.
PY - 2025/4/10
Y1 - 2025/4/10
N2 - We present a detailed analysis of AT 2020nov, a tidal disruption event (TDE) in the center of its host galaxy, located at a redshift of z = 0.083. AT 2020nov exhibits unique features, including double-peaked Balmer emission lines, a broad UV/optical flare, and a peak log luminosity in the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) estimated at ∼ 45.6 6 − 0.33 + 0.10 erg s − 1 . A late-time X-ray flare was also observed, reaching an absorbed luminosity of 1.67 × 1043 erg s−1 approximately 300 days after the UV/optical peak. Multiwavelength coverage, spanning optical, UV, X-ray, and mid-infrared (MIR) bands, reveals a complex spectral energy distribution (SED) that includes MIR flaring indicative of dust echoes, suggesting a dust covering fraction consistent with typical TDEs. Spectral modeling indicates the presence of an extended, quiescent disk around the central supermassive black hole with a radius of ∼ 5.0 6 − 0.77 + 0.59 × 1 0 4 R g . The multicomponent SED model, which includes a significant EUV component, suggests that the primary emission from the TDE is reprocessed by this extended disk, producing the observed optical and MIR features. The lack of strong active galactic nuclei signatures in the host galaxy, combined with the quiescent disk structure, highlights AT 2020nov as a rare example of a TDE occurring in a galaxy with a dormant but extended preexisting accretion structure.
AB - We present a detailed analysis of AT 2020nov, a tidal disruption event (TDE) in the center of its host galaxy, located at a redshift of z = 0.083. AT 2020nov exhibits unique features, including double-peaked Balmer emission lines, a broad UV/optical flare, and a peak log luminosity in the extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) estimated at ∼ 45.6 6 − 0.33 + 0.10 erg s − 1 . A late-time X-ray flare was also observed, reaching an absorbed luminosity of 1.67 × 1043 erg s−1 approximately 300 days after the UV/optical peak. Multiwavelength coverage, spanning optical, UV, X-ray, and mid-infrared (MIR) bands, reveals a complex spectral energy distribution (SED) that includes MIR flaring indicative of dust echoes, suggesting a dust covering fraction consistent with typical TDEs. Spectral modeling indicates the presence of an extended, quiescent disk around the central supermassive black hole with a radius of ∼ 5.0 6 − 0.77 + 0.59 × 1 0 4 R g . The multicomponent SED model, which includes a significant EUV component, suggests that the primary emission from the TDE is reprocessed by this extended disk, producing the observed optical and MIR features. The lack of strong active galactic nuclei signatures in the host galaxy, combined with the quiescent disk structure, highlights AT 2020nov as a rare example of a TDE occurring in a galaxy with a dormant but extended preexisting accretion structure.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105002049825
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105002049825#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/adb974
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/adb974
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105002049825
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 983
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 28
ER -