Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

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ASASSN-15lh: a TDE about a maximally rotating 109 M⊙ black hole

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters Oxford University Press 497:1 (2020) L13-L18

Authors:

Andrew Mummery, Steven A Balbus

Abstract:

We model the light curves of the novel and extremely luminous transient ASASSN-15lh at nine different frequencies, from infrared to ultraviolet photon energies, as an evolving relativistic disc produced in the aftermath of a tidal disruption event (TDE). Good fits to all nine light curves are simultaneously obtained when Macc ≃ 0.07 M⊙ is accreted on to a black hole of mass M ≃ 109 M⊙ and near-maximal rotation a/rg = 0.99. The best-fitting black hole mass is consistent with a number of existing estimates from galactic scaling relationships. If confirmed, our results represent the detection of one of the most massive rapidly spinning black holes to date, and are strong evidence for a TDE origin for ASASSN-15lh. This would be the first TDE to be observed in the disc-dominated state at optical and infrared frequencies.
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An outflow powers the optical rise of the nearby, fast-evolving tidal disruption event AT2019qiz

(2020)

Authors:

M Nicholl, T Wevers, SR Oates, KD Alexander, G Leloudas, F Onori, A Jerkstrand, S Gomez, S Campana, I Arcavi, P Charalampopoulos, M Gromadzki, N Ihanec, PG Jonker, A Lawrence, I Mandel, S Schulze, P Short, J Burke, C McCully, D Hiramatsu, DA Howell, C Pellegrino, H Abbot, JP Anderson, E Berger, PK Blanchard, G Cannizzaro, T-W Chen, M Dennefeld, L Galbany, S Gonzalez-Gaitan, G Hosseinzadeh, C Inserra, I Irani, P Kuin, T Muller-Bravo, J Pineda, NP Ross, R Roy, SJ Smartt, KW Smith, B Tucker, L Wyrzykowski, DR Young
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The Panchromatic Afterglow of GW170817: The full uniform dataset, modeling, comparison with previous results and implications

(2020)

Authors:

Sphesihle Makhathini, Kunal P Mooley, Murray Brightman, Kenta Hotokezaka, AJ Nayana, Huib T Intema, Dougal Dobie, E Lenc, Daniel A Perley, Christoffer Fremling, Javier Moldon, Davide Lazzati, David L Kaplan, Arvind Balasubramanian, Ian Brown, Dario Carbone, Poonam Chandra, Alessandra Corsi, Fernando Camilo, Adam T Deller, Dale A Frail, Tara Murphy, Eric J Murphy, Ehud Nakar, Oleg Smirnov, Robert Beswick, Rob Fender, Gregg Hallinan, Ian Heywood, Mansi M Kasliwal, Bomee Lee, Wenbin Lu, Javed Rana, SJ Perkins, Sarah V White, Gyula I Jozsa, Benjamin Hugo, Peter Kamphuis
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Accretion disc winds in tidal disruption events: ultraviolet spectral lines as orientation indicators

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 494:4 (2020) 4914-4929

Authors:

Edward J Parkinson, Christian Knigge, Knox S Long, James H Matthews, Nick Higginbottom, Stuart A Sim, Henrietta A Hewitt
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LOFAR 144-MHz follow-up observations of GW170817

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 494:4 (2020) 5110-5117

Authors:

JW Broderick, TW Shimwell, K Gourdji, A Rowlinson, S Nissanke, K Hotokezaka, PG Jonker, C Tasse, MJ Hardcastle, JBR Oonk, RP Fender, RAMJ Wijers, A Shulevski, AJ Stewart, S ter Veen, VA Moss, MHD van der Wiel, DA Nichols, A Piette, ME Bell, D Carbone, S Corbel, J Eislöffel, J-M Grießmeier, EF Keane, CJ Law, T Muñoz-Darias, M Pietka, M Serylak, AJ van der Horst, J van Leeuwen, R Wijnands, P Zarka, JM Anderson, MJ Bentum, R Blaauw, WN Brouw, M Brüggen, B Ciardi, M de Vos, S Duscha, RA Fallows, TMO Franzen, MA Garrett, AW Gunst, M Hoeft, JR Hörandel, M Iacobelli, E Jütte, LVE Koopmans, A Krankowski, P Maat, G Mann, H Mulder, A Nelles, H Paas, M Pandey-Pommier, R Pekal, W Reich, HJA Röttgering, DJ Schwarz, O Smirnov, M Soida, MC Toribio, MP van Haarlem, RJ van Weeren, C Vocks, O Wucknitz, P Zucca
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