A loud quasi-periodic oscillation after a star is disrupted by a massive black hole
Author(s)
Fragile, P. Chris; Franchini, Alessia; Stone, Nicholas C.; Lodato, Giuseppe; Coughlin, Eric R.; Pasham, Nishanth R.; Pasham, Dheeraj Ranga Reddy; Remillard, Ronald A; Homan, Jeroen; Chakrabarty, Deepto; Baganoff, Frederick K; Steiner, James F; ... Show more Show less
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Alternative title
A loud quasi-periodic oscillation after a star is disrupted by a massive black hole
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Show full item recordAbstract
The tidal forces close to massive black holes can rip apart stars that come too close to them. As the resulting stellar debris spirals toward the black hole, the debris heats up and emits x-rays. We report observations of a stable 131-second x-ray quasi-periodic oscillation from the tidal disruption event ASASSN-14li. Assuming the black hole mass indicated by host galaxy scaling relations, these observations imply that the periodicity originates from close to the event horizon and that the black hole is rapidly spinning. Our findings demonstrate that tidal disruption events can generate quasi-periodic oscillations that encode information about the physical properties of their black holes.
Date issued
2018-12Department
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space ResearchJournal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Pasham, Dheeraj R. et al. “A Loud Quasi-Periodic Oscillation after a Star Is Disrupted by a Massive Black Hole.” Science 363, 6426 (January 2019): 531–534 © 2017 The Authors
Version: Original manuscript
ISSN
0036-8075
1095-9203