TY - JOUR
T1 - A Census of Archival X-Ray Spectra for Modeling Tidal Disruption Events
AU - Goldtooth, Aaron
AU - Zabludoff, Ann I.
AU - Wen, Sixiang
AU - Jonker, Peter G.
AU - Stone, Nicholas C.
AU - Cao, Zheng
N1 - Funding Information:
The material contained in this document is based upon work supported by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) cooperative agreement awarded to the Arizona/NASA Space Grant Consortium under grant 80NSSC20M0041. A.G. and A.I.Z. also acknowledge support from NASA ADAP grant 80NSSC21K0988.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP). All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/3/1
Y1 - 2023/3/1
N2 - Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are highly energetic phenomena that occur when a star is tidally disrupted by the central massive black hole in a galaxy. Fitting the observed X-ray spectra of TDEs with a first-principles, general-relativistic slim-disk model for the emission from the inner accretion disk can constrain the black hole mass M • and dimensionless spin a •. Multiepoch spectra can break degeneracies in parameter estimation, particularly when they include a period of super-Eddington mass accretion. Even one observed super-Eddington epoch can be useful. Constraints on {M •, a •} improve as a power law with the number of spectral counts; the power-law index is higher for a higher mass accretion rate. These results are supported by the successful modeling of real spectra in the nearby (0.0206 ≤ z ≤ 0.145) TDEs ASASSN-14li, 3XMM J150052.0+015452, and 3XMM J215022.4-055108, which were observed over multiple epochs with >1 ks exposure times. Guided by these results, we create an updated and expanded TDE catalog from the Open TDE compilation. We then explore the XMM-Newton and Chandra archives to identify 37 TDE candidates with promising spectra for constraining {M •, a •} with slim-disk model fits. At least seven TDEs are likely associated with intermediate-mass black holes. Three of the 24 TDEs with multiepoch UV/optical photometry from Swift have late-time observations that allow their light curves to be compared directly to model predictions from the X-ray spectral fits. Existing X-ray spectra for other TDEs can be augmented with future optical/UV data. Ultimately, our new TDE catalog will reveal the {M •, a •} distributions traced by TDEs, thereby discriminating among black hole growth scenarios and providing insights on general relativity and dark matter particle candidates. The new TDE catalog is here: https://github.com/aarongoldtooth/Census-of-TDE-and-Archival-X-Ray-UV-Data/blob/main/Full%20New%20TDE%20Catalog%20(Published).tsv, and the codes used to construct it are here: https://github.com/aarongoldtooth/Census-of-TDE-and-Archival-X-Ray-UV-Data.
AB - Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are highly energetic phenomena that occur when a star is tidally disrupted by the central massive black hole in a galaxy. Fitting the observed X-ray spectra of TDEs with a first-principles, general-relativistic slim-disk model for the emission from the inner accretion disk can constrain the black hole mass M • and dimensionless spin a •. Multiepoch spectra can break degeneracies in parameter estimation, particularly when they include a period of super-Eddington mass accretion. Even one observed super-Eddington epoch can be useful. Constraints on {M •, a •} improve as a power law with the number of spectral counts; the power-law index is higher for a higher mass accretion rate. These results are supported by the successful modeling of real spectra in the nearby (0.0206 ≤ z ≤ 0.145) TDEs ASASSN-14li, 3XMM J150052.0+015452, and 3XMM J215022.4-055108, which were observed over multiple epochs with >1 ks exposure times. Guided by these results, we create an updated and expanded TDE catalog from the Open TDE compilation. We then explore the XMM-Newton and Chandra archives to identify 37 TDE candidates with promising spectra for constraining {M •, a •} with slim-disk model fits. At least seven TDEs are likely associated with intermediate-mass black holes. Three of the 24 TDEs with multiepoch UV/optical photometry from Swift have late-time observations that allow their light curves to be compared directly to model predictions from the X-ray spectral fits. Existing X-ray spectra for other TDEs can be augmented with future optical/UV data. Ultimately, our new TDE catalog will reveal the {M •, a •} distributions traced by TDEs, thereby discriminating among black hole growth scenarios and providing insights on general relativity and dark matter particle candidates. The new TDE catalog is here: https://github.com/aarongoldtooth/Census-of-TDE-and-Archival-X-Ray-UV-Data/blob/main/Full%20New%20TDE%20Catalog%20(Published).tsv, and the codes used to construct it are here: https://github.com/aarongoldtooth/Census-of-TDE-and-Archival-X-Ray-UV-Data.
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U2 - 10.1088/1538-3873/acb9bc
DO - 10.1088/1538-3873/acb9bc
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85150426883
SN - 0004-6280
VL - 135
JO - Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
JF - Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
IS - 1045
M1 - 034101
ER -