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The Destruction and Recreation of the X-Ray Corona in a Changing-Look Active Galactic Nucleus

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The Destruction and Recreation of the X-Ray Corona in a Changing-Look Active Galactic Nucleus The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 898:L1 (6pp), 2020 July 20 https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab91a1 © 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The Destruction and Recreation of the X-Ray Corona in a Changing-look Active Galactic Nucleus C. Ricci1,2,3 , E. Kara4 , M. Loewenstein5,6, B. Trakhtenbrot7 , I. Arcavi7,8 , R. Remillard4 , A. C. Fabian9 , K. C. Gendreau5, Z. Arzoumanian5,R.Li2,L.C.Ho2,10 , C. L. MacLeod11, E. Cackett12 , D. Altamirano13 , P. Gandhi13 , P. Kosec9, D. Pasham4, J. Steiner4 , and C.-H. Chan7,14 1 Núcleo de Astronomía de la Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército Libertador 441, Santiago, Chile; [email protected] 2 Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China 3 George Mason University, Department of Physics & Astronomy, MS 3F3, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA 4 MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, 70 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 5 Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA 6 Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA 7 School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel 8 CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program, CIFAR, Toronto, Canada 9 Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, CB3 0HA Cambridge, UK 10 Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China 11 Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-1516, USA 12 Department of Physics & Astronomy, Wayne State University, 666 West Hancock Street, Detroit, MI 48201, USA 13 Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire S017 1BJ, UK 14 Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel Received 2020 April 22; revised 2020 May 6; accepted 2020 May 8; published 2020 July 16 Abstract We present the drastic transformation of the X-ray properties of the active galactic nucleus (AGN) 1ES 1927+654, following a changing-look event. After the optical/ultraviolet outburst the power-law component, produced in the X-ray corona, disappeared, and the spectrum of 1ES 1927+65 instead became dominated by a blackbody component (kT∼80–120 eV). This implies that the X-ray corona, ubiquitously found in AGNs, was destroyed in the event. Our dense ∼450 days long X-ray monitoring shows that the source is extremely variable in the X-ray band. On long timescales the source varies up to ∼4 dex in ∼100 days, while on short timescales up to ∼2 dex in ∼8 hr. The luminosity of the source is found to first show a strong dip down to ~1040 erg s- 1, and then a constant increase in luminosity to levels exceeding the pre-outburst level 300 days after the optical event detection, rising up asymptotically to ~´210ergs44- 1. As the X-ray luminosity of the source increases, the X-ray corona is recreated, and a very steep power-law component (Γ;3) reappears, and dominates the emission for 0.3–2 keV luminosities 1043.7 erg s- 1, ∼300 days after the beginning of the event. We discuss possible origins of this event, and speculate that our observations could be explained by the interaction between the accretion flow and debris from a tidally disrupted star. Our results show that changing-look events can be associated with dramatic and rapid transformations of the innermost regions of accreting supermassive black holes. Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Active galactic nuclei (16); Active galaxies (17); High energy astrophysics (739); X-ray active galactic nuclei (2035); Quasars (1319); X-ray quasars (1821); Supermassive black holes (1663) 1. Introduction So far only a few dozens of these systems have been discovered (e.g., Yang et al. 2018; MacLeod et al. 2019) and, Accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are known to due to their rarity, it has been very difficult to catch any of them show variable optical, ultraviolet (UV), and X-ray emission. during the transition phase. We were recently able to observe, One of the most intriguing aspects of this behavior is associated fi “‘ ” / for the rst time, an AGN in the act of changing phase. with changing-look sources, in which the optical UV broad 1ES 1927+654 (z=0.019422; Trakhtenbrot et al. 2019) was emission lines, produced by rapidly moving material surround- fi ( ( ) previously classi ed as a type 2 AGN e.g., Gallo et al. 2013 ing the SMBH e.g., Kaspi et al. 2000 , appear or disappear and references therein). In March 2018 the All-Sky Automated ( e.g., Shappee et al. 2014; LaMassa et al. 2015; Trakhtenbrot Survey for SuperNovae (Shappee et al. 2014) showed that the ) et al. 2019 . This implies that changing-look active galactic source suddenly increased in flux by an order of magnitude in ( ) ( nuclei AGNs transition from type 1 showing both broad and the optical V-band (ASASSN-18el/AT2018zf, Nicholls et al. narrow ionic emission lines in the optical) to type 2 (showing 2018). The analysis of Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert only narrow lines), or vice versa. The physical mechanism System (ATLAS; Tonry et al. 2018) data indicated that the producing these changing-look events is still hotly debated; the event was first detected on 2017 December 23. An optical observed changes could be related to radiation pressure spectroscopic follow-up campaign showed first a very blue instabilities in the disk (Śniegowska & Czerny 2019), to state continuum and then, 1–3 months after the optical flux rise, transitions (Noda & Done 2018; Ruan et al. 2019),orto evidence of strong broad Balmer emission lines (Trakhtenbrot variations in accretion rate (Elitzur et al. 2014), possibly related et al. 2019). to transient events (Merloni et al. 2015), with the source going Right after the appearance of the broad optical lines we through a highly accreting phase and producing broad lines. started monitoring the source in the X-ray band. X-rays in 1 The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 898:L1 (6pp), 2020 July 20 Ricci et al. AGNs are primarily created by Comptonization of optical/UV observation of our campaign (2018 June, red spectrum in disk photons in a corona of hot electrons, located within a light- Figure 2), the spectrum was extremely soft, with the emission hour from the accreting system (Fabian et al. 2009), and likely being dominated by a blackbody-like component. The powered by the magnetic field of the accretion disk (Merloni & disappearance of the power-law component, which has not Fabian 2001). These electrons transfer their energy to the disk hitherto been observed in AGNs, implies that the dramatic photons, up-scattering them into the X-rays (Haardt & event that created the broad lines also destroyed the X-ray Maraschi 1991), and creating the power-law continuum corona. The X-ray spectra of 1ES 1927+654 can be typically ubiquitously found in AGNs. X-ray observations therefore well modeled by a blackbody, two Gaussian emission lines and provide an extremely powerful tool to study the inner regions a power-law component. Absorption from outflowing ionized fl 20 -2 of AGNs and the physical conditions of the accretion ow. In gas (with NH ~ 10 cm ) is also clearly observed in the this work we discuss the peculiar X-ray properties of 1ES 1927 XMM-Newton/Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) obser- +654 after the changing-look event. Throughout the Letter we vations (see Ricci et al. 2020). During the 2018 June XMM- adopt standard cosmological parameters Newton observation the blackbody was found to have a ( --11 ) H0 = 70 km s Mpc , W=m 0.3, W=L 0.7 . Unless other- temperature of kT=102±1 eV, and only a very faint power- wise stated, uncertainties are quoted at the 90% confidence law emission was detected at E1.5 keV, carrying a very level. small fraction (0.4 ± 0.3%) of the total 0.3–2 keV flux. The power-law component is undetected or extremely faint also in 2. The Disappearance and Reappearance of the Power-law the observations carried out by NICER in 2018 July, when the Component luminosity was at its lowest level, and in 2018 August (spectra 2 and 3 in Figure 2, respectively). The spectral analysis of the Our X-ray campaign consists of 265 Neutron star Interior stacked NICER spectra, obtained combining observations ( Composition Explorer NICER; Gendreau et al. 2012; carried out in June to 2018 mid-August, recovered only upper Arzoumanian et al. 2014) observations (for a total of 678ks), fl ( ) limits for the ratio between the power-law and blackbody ux 14 Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Gehrels et al. 2004 in the 0.3–2 keV band. These upper limits range between observations (26 ks), and three joint X-ray Multi-Mirror ( ) ( ) ( ) / 0.5% 2018 June and 6% 2018 August . As the Mission XMM -Newton Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope luminosity of the source increased above the pre-outburst Array (NuSTAR; Jansen et al. 2001; Harrison et al. 2013) / ( / ) level, our XMM-Newton NuSTAR and NICER observations observations 158 169 ks . Details about the data reduction and show that the power-law component reappeared (spectra 4 and spectral analysis of all these X-ray observations are reported in 5). Interestingly, the photon index of this power-law comp- a dedicated companion publication (Ricci et al. 2020, see also onent, Γ;3, is considerably higher than what is commonly Kara et al. 2018), while here we focus on the unexpected found in AGNs (Γ∼1.8; e.g., Ricci et al. 2017). spectral properties of 1ES 1927+654 after the changing-look In the X-ray observations carried out in late 2018 and in event.
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