An Ultrasoft X-ray Flare from 3XMM J152130.7+074916: a Tidal Disruption Event Candidate

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of an ultrasoft X-ray transient source likely caused by a star being tidally disrupted by a supermassive black hole, characterized by significant variability and a thermal disk spectrum.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed analysis of an ultrasoft X-ray flare as a tidal disruption event candidate with evidence of a super-Eddington outflow and disk instability.

Findings

Detected large X-ray flux variability (>260 times)

Spectral fitting indicates a thermal disk with a temperature of 0.17 keV

Presence of a fast-moving warm absorber

Abstract

We report on the discovery of an ultrasoft X-ray transient source, 3XMM J152130.7+074916. It was serendipitously detected in an XMM-Newton observation on 2000 August 23, and its location is consistent with the center of the galaxy SDSS J152130.72+074916.5 (z=0.17901 and d_L=866 Mpc). The high-quality X-ray spectrum can be fitted with a thermal disk with an apparent inner disk temperature of 0.17 keV and a rest-frame 0.24-11.8 keV unabsorbed luminosity of ~5e43 erg/s, subject to a fast-moving warm absorber. Short-term variability was also clearly observed, with the spectrum being softer at lower flux. The source was covered but not detected in a Chandra observation on 2000 April 3, a Swift observation on 2005 September 10, and a second XMM-Newton observation on 2014 January 19, implying a large variability (>260) of the X-ray flux. The optical spectrum of the candidate host galaxy, taken ~11 yrs after the XMM-Newton detection, shows no sign of nuclear activity. This, combined with its transient and ultrasoft properties, leads us to explain the source as tidal disruption of a star by the supermassive black hole in the galactic center. We attribute the fast-moving warm absorber detected in the first XMM-Newton observation to the super-Eddington outflow associated with the event and the short-term variability to a disk instability that caused fast change of the inner disk radius at a constant mass accretion rate.