Kavli Affiliate: Erin Kara
| First 5 Authors: Joheen Chakraborty, Erin Kara, Riccardo Arcodia, Johannes Buchner, Margherita Giustini
| Summary:
Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are recurring soft X-ray transients emerging
from the vicinity of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in nearby, low-mass
galaxy nuclei; about ten QPE hosts have been identified thus far. Here we
report the textit{NICER} discovery of QPEs in the optically-selected Tidal
Disruption Event (TDE) and Extreme Coronal Line Emitter (ECLE) AT2022upj,
exhibiting a large spread in recurrence times from 0.5-3.5 days, durations from
0.3-1 days, peak luminosities from $10^{42.5-43.0}$ erg s$^{-1}$, and erratic
flare profiles. A wealth of evidence now links at least some QPEs to the
newly-formed accretion flows emerging from TDEs; AT2022upj is the third QPE
reported in an optically discovered TDE. Marginalizing over the uncertain
distributions of QPE peak luminosity, recurrence time, delay after TDE peak,
and lifetime, we use the burgeoning sample to make a Bayesian estimate that the
fraction of optical TDEs resulting in QPEs within 5 years post-disruption is
$9^{+9}_{-5}$%. Along with AT2019qiz, AT2022upj also marks the second of the
three optical TDE+X-ray QPEs showing coronal line emission, suggesting ECLEs
may represent a subset of TDEs particularly efficient at forming QPEs and/or
that sustained QPE X-ray emission contributes to coronal line emission in some
galaxy nuclei.
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