2022/08/31 by C. R. Angus, Vivienne Baldassare, V. F. Baldassare +80 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2209.00018
Accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy
openalex publication_date 2022/08/31 · arxiv created 2022/09/05 · arxiv updated 2022/09/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Massive black holes (BHs) at the centres of massive galaxies are ubiquitous. The population of BHs within dwarf galaxies, on the other hand, is evasive. Dwarf galaxies are thought to harbour BHs with proportionally small masses, including intermediate mass BHs, with masses 102 < MBH < 106 M\odot. Identification of these systems has historically relied upon the detection of light emitted from accreting gaseous discs close to the BHs. Without this light, they are difficult to detect. Tidal disruption events (TDEs), the luminous flares produced when a star strays close to a BH and is shredded, are a direct way to probe massive BHs. The rise times of these flares theoretically correlate with the BH mass. Here we present AT2020neh, a fast rising TDE candidate, hosted by a dwarf galaxy. AT2020neh can be described by the tidal disruption of a main sequence star by a 104.7 - 105.9 M\odot BH. We find the observable rate of fast rising nuclear transients like AT2020neh to be rare, at \lesssim 2 × 10-8 events Mpc-3 yr-1. Finding non-accreting BHs in dwarf galaxies is important to determine how prevalent BHs are within these galaxies, and constrain models of BH formation. AT2020neh-like events may provide a galaxy-independent method of measuring IMBH masses.