The Birth of a Relativistic Jet Following the Disruption of a Star by a Cosmological Black Hole
Creators: name: Pasham, Dheeraj R.
name: Lucchini, Matteo
name: Laskar, Tanmoy
name: Gompertz, Benjamin P.
name: Srivastav, Shubham
name: Nicholl, Matt
name: Smartt, Stephen J.
name: Miller-Jones, James C. A.
name: Alexander, Kate D.
name: Fender, Rob
name: Smith, Graham P.
name: Fulton, Michael D.
name: Dewangan, Gulab
name: Gendreau, Keith
name: Coughlin, Eric R.
name: Rhodes, Lauren
name: Horesh, Assaf
name: van Velzen, Sjoert
name: Sfaradi, Itai
name: Guolo, Muryel
name: Segura, N. Castro
name: Aamer, Aysha
name: Anderson, Joseph P.
name: Arcavi, Iair
name: Brennan, Sean J.
name: Chambers, Kenneth
name: Charalampopoulos, Panos
name: Chen, Ting-Wan
name: Clocchiatti, A.
name: de Boer, Thomas
name: Dennefeld, Michel
name: Ferrara, Elizabeth
name: Galbany, Lluis
name: Gao, Hua
name: Gillanders, James H.
name: Goodwin, Adelle
name: Gromadzki, Mariusz
name: Huber, M
name: Jonker, Peter G.
name: Joshi, Manasvita
name: Kara, Erin
name: Killestein, Thomas L.
name: Kosec, Peter
name: Kocevski, Daniel
name: Leloudas, Giorgos
name: Lin, Chien-Cheng
name: Margutti, Raffaella
name: Mattila, Seppo
name: Moore, Thomas
name: Muller-Bravo, Tomas
name: Ngeow, Chow-Choong
name: Oates, Samantha
name: Onori, Francesca
name: Pan, Yen-Chen
name: Perez-Torres, Miguel
name: Rani, Priyanka
name: Remillard, Ronald
name: Ridley, Evan J.
name: Schulze, Steve
name: Sheng, Xinyue
name: Shingles, Luke
name: Smith, Ken W.
name: Steiner, James
name: Wainscoat, Richard
name: Wevers, Thomas
name: Yang, Sheng
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: A black hole can launch a powerful relativistic jet after it tidally disrupts a star. If this jet fortuitously aligns with our line of sight, the overall brightness is Doppler boosted by several orders of magnitude. Consequently, such on-axis relativistic tidal disruption events (TDEs) have the potential to unveil cosmological (redshift $z&gt;$1) quiescent black holes and are ideal test beds to understand the radiative mechanisms operating in super-Eddington jets. Here, we present multi-wavelength (X-ray, UV, optical, and radio) observations of the optically discovered transient \target at $z=1.193$. Its unusual X-ray properties, including a peak observed luminosity of $\gtrsim$10$^{48}$ erg s$^{-1}$, systematic variability on timescales as short as 1000 seconds, and overall duration lasting more than 30 days in the rest-frame are traits associated with relativistic TDEs. The X-ray to radio spectral energy distributions spanning 5-50 days after discovery can be explained as synchrotron emission from a relativistic jet (radio), synchrotron self-Compton (X-rays), and thermal emission similar to that seen in low-redshift TDEs (UV/optical). Our modeling implies a beamed, highly relativistic jet akin to blazars but requires extreme matter-domination, i.e, high ratio of electron-to-magnetic field energy densities in the jet, and challenges our theoretical understanding of jets.
description: To appear in Nature Astronomy on 30th November 2022. Also see here for an animation explaining the result: https://youtu.be/MQHdSbxuznY