Astronomers have performed radio observations of WTP 14adeqka—a tidal disruption event discovered a decade ago. Results of the observational campaign, published August 22 on the pre-print server arXiv, provide crucial insights regarding the radio emission from this source.
Astronomers have performed radio observations of WTP 14adeqka—a tidal disruption event discovered a decade ago. Results of the observational campaign, published August 22 on the pre-print server arXiv, provide crucial insights regarding the radio emission from this source.
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are phenomena which occur when a star passes close enough to a supermassive black hole and is pulled apart by the black hole’s tidal forces, causing the process of disruption. Radio observations of synchrotron emission from TDE ejecta have the potential to reveal the presence and properties of nonrelativistic quasi-spherical outflows, on-axis jets, or off-axis jets.
Recent observations show that many optically-discovered TDEs exhibit radio emission delayed by about two to three years. This puzzling time lag is assumed to be due to off-axis jets, a previously unknown phase of the outflow, a complex density structure surrounding the supermassive black hole (SMBH), or delayed, nonrelativistic outflows.
