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arXiv · 2102.05795

FIRST J153350.8+272729: the radio afterglow of a decades-old tidal disruption event

Vikram Ravi·Hannah Dykaar·Jackson Codd·Ginevra Zaccagnini·Dillon Dong·Maria R. Drout·Bryan M. Gaensler·Gregg Hallinan·Casey Law
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Abstract

We present the discovery of the fading radio transient FIRST J153350.8+272729. The source had a maximum observed 5-GHz radio luminosity of $8\times10^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$ in 1986, but by 2019 had faded by a factor of nearly 400. It is located 0.15 arcsec from the center of a galaxy (SDSS J153350.89+272729) at 147 Mpc, which shows weak Type II Seyfert activity. We show that a tidal disruption event (TDE) is the preferred scenario for FIRST J153350.8+272729, although it could plausibly be interpreted as the afterglow of a long-duration gamma-ray burst. This is only the second TDE candidate to be first discovered at radio wavelengths. Its luminosity fills a gap between the radio afterglows of sub-relativistic TDEs in the local universe, and relativistic TDEs at high redshifts. The unusual properties of FIRST J153350.8+272729 (ongoing nuclear activity in the host galaxy, high radio luminosity) motivate more extensive TDE searches in untargeted radio surveys.

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Vikram Ravi, Hannah Dykaar, Jackson Codd, Ginevra Zaccagnini, Dillon Dong, Maria R. Drout, Bryan M. Gaensler, Gregg Hallinan, Casey Law. 2021-02-11. FIRST J153350.8+272729: the radio afterglow of a decades-old tidal disruption event. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac2b33

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