Tidal disruption of a super-Jupiter by a massive black hole
Abstract
Aims: A strong, hard X-ray flare was discovered (IGR J12580+0134) by INTEGRAL in 2011, and is associated to NGC 4845, a Seyfert 2 galaxy never detected at high-energy previously. To understand what happened we observed this event in the X-ray band on several occasions.
Methods: Follow-up observations with XMM-Newton, Swift, and MAXI are presented together with the INTEGRAL data. Long and short term variability are analysed and the event wide band spectral shape modelled.
Results: The spectrum of the source can be described with an absorbed (NH ~ 7 × 1022 cm-2) power law (Γ ≃ 2.2), characteristic of an accreting source, plus a soft X-ray excess, likely to be of diffuse nature. The hard X-ray flux increased to maximum in a few weeks and decreased over a year, with the evolution expected for a tidal disruption event. The fast variations observed near the flare maximum allowed us to estimate the mass of the central black hole in NGC 4845 as ~3 × 105 M⊙. The observed flare corresponds to the disruption of about 10% of an object with a mass of 14-30 Jupiter. The hard X-ray emission should come from a corona forming around the accretion flow close to the black hole. This is the first tidal event where such a corona has been observed.
- Publication:
-
Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- April 2013
- DOI:
- 10.1051/0004-6361/201220664
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1304.0397
- Bibcode:
- 2013A&A...552A..75N
- Keywords:
-
- galaxies: active;
- X-rays: galaxies;
- X-rays: individuals: IGR J12580+0134;
- X-rays: individuals: NGC 4845;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 8 pages, 10 figures, 4 tables