2025/10/30 by Muryel Guolo, Guolo, M., Andrew Mummery +19
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2510.26774
We present a multi-wavelength analysis of 14 tidal disruption events (TDEs)-including an off-nuclear event associated with an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy-selected for having available thermal X-ray spectra during their late-time UV/optical plateau phase. We show that at these stages, the full spectral energy distribution - X-ray spectra and UV/optical photometry - is well described by a compact, yet standard accretion disk, the same disk which powers the X-rays at all times. By fitting up to three epochs per source with a fully relativistic disk model, we show that many system properties can be reliably recovered, including importantly the black hole mass (M\bullet). These accretion-based M\bullet values, which in this sample span nearly three orders of magnitude, are consistent with galactic scaling relations but are significantly more precise (68% credible interval < ± 0.3 dex) and physically motivated. Expected accretion scaling relations (e.g., LBol disk / LEdd ∝ Tp4 ∝ M\bullet-1), TDE-specific physics correlations (Lplat ∝ M\bullet2/3 and Rout/rg ∝ M\bullet-2/3) and black hole-host galaxy correlations (M\bullet-Mgal and M\bullet-σ⋆) naturally emerge from the data and, for the first time, are self-consistently extended into the intermediate-mass (IMBH, M\bullet < 105) regime. We discuss the implications of these results for TDE physics and modeling. We also review and discuss different methods for M\bullet inference in TDEs, and find that approaches based on physical models of the early-time UV/optical emission are not able to recover (at a statistically significant level) black hole-host galaxy scalings.