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Researchers conducted a systematic search of the NEOWISE infrared survey archive to identify highly luminous Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs), which occur when stars are torn apart by supermassive black holes at galaxy centers. They discovered 10 exceptionally bright infrared TDEs and found that these high-luminosity events occur at a significantly suppressed rate compared to fainter TDEs, with an estimated occurrence of approximately 1.2×10^-10 events per cubic megaparsec per year. This turnover in the luminosity function suggests these rare, luminous events preferentially occur around more massive black holes, which naturally produce fewer TDEs due to their larger tidal disruption radii.
Why it matters
This work establishes that the brightest TDEs are much rarer than expected from extrapolating lower-luminosity events, providing crucial constraints on supermassive black hole demographics and the physics of stellar disruption. The findings help astronomers better understand the relationship between black hole mass and TDE production rates, improving predictions for future infrared survey discoveries.
Understand the Science
arXiv:2606.31926v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) serve as direct probes of the population of supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies and are nowadays regularly detected in optical wide-field time-domain sky surveys. Recent studies have demonstrated that a large fraction of TDEs can be uniquely identified in the infrared (IR) waveband, but these studies have to date been limited to relatively nearby events. In this work, we searched for highly luminous IR-bright TDEs that are rare and thus missed by searches in the local universe. We performed a systematic search of the NEOWISE archive and developed a new selection criterion based on the evolution of the W1-W2 color to select TDE candidates. We identified 10 IR bright TDEs with peak luminosities above $L_{rm peak, W2} simeq 3 times 10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$ and estimated an event rate of $1.2^{+0.5}_{-0.4}times10^{-10}$ Mpc$^{-3}$year$^{-1}$ for the luminosity range of our sample. Compared to the existing local luminosity function of lower luminosity events, we detect a suppressed rate for these highly luminous events. This turn-over in the luminosity function can be naturally explained by the suppressed amount of TDEs taking place in systems with larger black hole masses, thereby confirming the TDE nature of our sources.
Source: A Suppressed Volumetric Rate of High-Luminosity Mid-Infrared Selected Tidal Disruption Events