The First Radio-bright Off-nuclear Tidal Disruption Event AT 2024tvd Reveals the Fastest-evolving Double-peaked Radio Emission

Journal article

We present the first multiepoch broadband radio and millimeter monitoring of an off-nuclear tidal disruption event (TDE) using the Very Large Array, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the Allen Telescope Array, the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array, and the Submillimeter Array. The off-nuclear TDE AT 2024tvd exhibits double-peaked radio light curves and the fastest-evolving radio emission observed from a TDE to date. With respect to the optical discovery date, the first radio flare rises faster than Fν ∼ t9 at Δt = 88–131 days and then decays as fast as Fν ∼ t−6. The emergence of a second radio flare is observed at Δt ≈ 194 days with an initial fast rise of Fν ∼ t18 and an optically thin decline of Fν ∼ t−12. We interpret these observations in the context of a self-absorbed and free–free absorbed synchrotron spectrum, while accounting for both synchrotron and inverse Compton cooling. We find that a single prompt outflow cannot easily explain these observations and that it is likely that either there is only one outflow that was launched at Δt ∼ 80 days or there are two distinct outflows, with the second launched at Δt ∼ 170–190 days. The nature of these outflows, whether sub-, mildly, or ultrarelativistic, is still unclear, and we explore these different scenarios. Finally, we find a temporal coincidence between the launch time of the first radio-emitting outflow and the onset of a power-law component in the X-ray spectrum, attributed to inverse Compton scattering of thermal photons.

Authors: Sfaradi, I; Margutti, R; Chornock, R; Alexander, KD; Metzger, BD

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Astronomical Society
• Journal: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
• Volume: 992
• Issue: 2
• Article number: L18
• Publication date: 2025-10-13
• Acceptance date: 2025-09-17
• DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ae0a26
• EISSN: 2041-8213
• ISSN: 2041-8205
• Language: English
• Keywords: Radio astronomy; Tidal disruption; Time domain astronomy; Supermassive black holes