A radio, optical, UV and X-ray view of the enigmatic changing look Active Galactic Nucleus 1ES~1927+654 from its pre- to post-flare states

TL;DR

This study tracks the multi-wavelength evolution of the changing-look AGN 1ES 1927+654 from pre- to post-flare states, revealing its return to a quiescent state and providing insights into the event's possible magnetic origin.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, multi-epoch, multi-wavelength analysis of the changing-look AGN, highlighting the re-establishment of the disk-corona relation and the radio/X-ray behavior during the event.

Findings

The AGN returned to its pre-flare optical, UV, and X-ray state.

The UV light curve decay suggests a magnetic flux inversion event.

Radio emission was lowest during the changing look event, with no nascent jets detected.

Abstract

The nearby type-II AGN 1ES1927+654 went through a violent changing-look (CL) event beginning December 2017 during which the optical and UV fluxes increased by four magnitudes over a few months, and broad emission lines newly appeared in the optical/UV. By July 2018 the X-ray coronal emission had completely vanished, only to reappear a few months later. In this work we report the evolution of the radio, optical, UV and X-rays from the pre-flare state through mid-2021 with new and archival data from the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), the European VLBI Network, the Very Large Array (VLA), the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), The Neil Gehrels Swift observatory and XMM-Newton. The main results from our work are: (1) The source has returned to its pre-CL state in optical, UV, and X-ray; the disk-corona relation has been re-established as has been in the pre-CL state, with an $\alpha_{\rm OX}\sim 1.02$. The optical spectra are dominated by narrow emission lines. (2) The UV light curve follows a shallower slope of $\propto t^{-0.91\pm 0.04}$ compared to that predicted by a tidal disruption event. We conjecture that a magnetic flux inversion event is the possible cause for this enigmatic event. (3) The compact radio emission which we tracked in the pre-CL (2014), during CL (2018) and post-CL(2021) at spatial scales $<1$ pc was at its lowest level during the changing look event in 2018, nearly contemporaneous with a low $2-10$ keV emission. The radio to X-ray ratio of the compact source $L_{\rm Radio}/L_{\rm X-ray}\sim 10^{-5.5}$, follows the Gudel-Benz relation, typically found in coronally active stars, and several AGN. (4) We do not detect any presence of nascent jets at the spatial scales of $\sim 5-10$ pc.