# A Tidal Disruption Event in a Nearby Galaxy Hosting an Intermediate Mass Black Hole

## TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a tidal disruption event in a nearby galaxy, providing evidence for an intermediate mass black hole and demonstrating the potential of such flares to study these elusive objects.

## Contribution

It presents the first evidence of a tidal disruption event in a galaxy hosting an intermediate mass black hole, highlighting a new method to probe such black holes.

## Key findings

- X-ray flux declined by a factor of ~2300 over 6 years
- Spectrum fits a blackbody with temperature ~0.09 keV
- Black hole mass estimated at log(M_BH/M_sun)~5.5±0.5

## Abstract

We report the serendipitous discovery of a bright point source flare in the Abell cluster 1795 with archival EUVE and Chandra observations. Assuming the EUVE emission is associated with the Chandra source, the X-ray 0.5-7 keV flux declined by a factor of ~2300 over a time span of 6 years, following a power-law decay with index ~2.44+-0.40. The Chandra data alone vary by a factor of ~20. The spectrum is well fit by a blackbody with a constant temperature of kT~0.09 keV (~10^6 K). The flare is spatially coincident with the nuclear region of a faint, inactive galaxy with a photometric redshift consistent at the one sigma level with the cluster (z=0.062476). We argue that these properties are indicative of a tidal disruption of a star by a black hole with log(M_BH/M_sun)~5.5+-0.5. If so, such a discovery indicates that tidal disruption flares may be used to probe black holes in the intermediate mass range, which are very difficult to study by other means.