TY - JOUR
T1 - Probing the Subparsec Dust of a Supermassive Black Hole with the Tidal Disruption Event AT 2020mot
AU - Newsome, Megan
AU - Arcavi, Iair
AU - Howell, D. Andrew
AU - Burke, Jamison
AU - De, Kishalay
AU - Dgany, Yael
AU - Faris, Sara
AU - Farah, Joseph
AU - Hiramatsu, Daichi
AU - McCully, Curtis
AU - Padilla-Gonzalez, Estefania
AU - Pellegrino, Craig
AU - Terreran, Giacomo
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2024/2/1
Y1 - 2024/2/1
N2 - AT 2020mot is a typical UV/optical tidal disruption event (TDE) with no radio or X-ray signatures in a quiescent host. We find an i-band excess and rebrightening along the decline of the light curve which could be due to two consecutive dust echoes from the TDE. We model our observations following van Velzen et al. and find that the near-infrared light curve can be explained by concentric rings of thin dust within ∼0.1 pc of a ∼6 × 106 M⊙ supermassive black hole (SMBH), among the smallest scales at which dust has been inferred near SMBHs. We find dust covering factors of order fc ≤ 2%, much lower than found for dusty tori of active galactic nuclei. These results highlight the potential of TDEs for uncovering the environments around black holes when including near-infrared observations in high-cadence transient studies.
AB - AT 2020mot is a typical UV/optical tidal disruption event (TDE) with no radio or X-ray signatures in a quiescent host. We find an i-band excess and rebrightening along the decline of the light curve which could be due to two consecutive dust echoes from the TDE. We model our observations following van Velzen et al. and find that the near-infrared light curve can be explained by concentric rings of thin dust within ∼0.1 pc of a ∼6 × 106 M⊙ supermassive black hole (SMBH), among the smallest scales at which dust has been inferred near SMBHs. We find dust covering factors of order fc ≤ 2%, much lower than found for dusty tori of active galactic nuclei. These results highlight the potential of TDEs for uncovering the environments around black holes when including near-infrared observations in high-cadence transient studies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183617997&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ad036e
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ad036e
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:85183617997
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 961
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 239
ER -