Luminous Thermal Flares from Quiescent Supermassive Black Holes
Suvi Gezari, Tim Heckman, S. Bradley Cenko, Michael Eracleous, Karl, Forster, Thiago S. Goncalves, D. Chris Martin, Patrick Morrissey, Susan G., Neff, Mark Seibert, David Schiminovich, and Ted K. Wyder

TL;DR
This paper reports the discovery and analysis of a tidal disruption event caused by a star being torn apart by a supermassive black hole, revealing unique UV/optical flare characteristics and comparing it with previous candidates.
Contribution
It presents the third candidate tidal disruption event discovered by GALEX, with detailed modeling of its UV/optical emission and comparison to other events, enhancing understanding of such phenomena.
Findings
UV/optical flare modeled as a blackbody at 1.7x10^5 K
X-ray emission is significantly fainter than active galaxy ratios
Light curves follow power-law decline consistent with debris fallback
Abstract
A dormant supermassive black hole lurking in the center of a galaxy will be revealed when a star passes close enough to be torn apart by tidal forces, and a flare of electromagnetic radiation is emitted when the bound fraction of the stellar debris falls back onto the black hole and is accreted. Here we present the third candidate tidal disruption event discovered in the GALEX Deep Imaging Survey: a 1.6x10^{43} erg s^{-1} UV/optical flare from a star-forming galaxy at z=0.1855. The UV/optical SED during the peak of the flare measured by GALEX and Palomar LFC imaging can be modeled as a single temperature blackbody with T_{bb}=1.7x10^{5} K and a bolometric luminosity of 3x10^{45} erg s^{-1}, assuming an internal extinction with E(B-V)_{gas}=0.3. The Chandra upper limit on the X-ray luminosity during the peak of the flare, L_{X}(2-10 keV)< 10^{41} erg s^{-1}, is 2 orders of magnitude…
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