Kavli Affiliate: Michael Fausnaugh
| First 5 Authors: Lydia Makrygianni, Iair Arcavi, Megan Newsome, Ananya Bandopadhyay, Eric R. Coughlin
| Summary:
Flares produced following the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black
holes can reveal the properties of the otherwise dormant majority of black
holes and the physics of accretion. In the past decade, a class of
optical-ultraviolet tidal disruption flares has been discovered whose emission
properties do not match theoretical predictions. This has led to extensive
efforts to model the dynamics and emission mechanisms of optical-ultraviolet
tidal disruptions in order to establish them as probes of supermassive black
holes. Here we present the optical-ultraviolet tidal disruption event AT
2022dbl, which showed a nearly identical repetition 700 days after the first
flare. Ruling out gravitational lensing and two chance unrelated disruptions,
we conclude that at least the first flare represents the partial disruption of
a star, possibly captured through the Hills mechanism. Since both flares are
typical of the optical-ultraviolet class of tidal disruptions in terms of their
radiated energy, temperature, luminosity, and spectral features, it follows
that either the entire class are partial rather than full stellar disruptions,
contrary to the prevalent assumption, or that some members of the class are
partial disruptions, having nearly the same observational characteristics as
full disruptions. Whichever option is true, these findings could require
revised models for the emission mechanisms of optical-ultraviolet tidal
disruption flares and a reassessment of their expected rates.
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