A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Detection of disk-jet coprecession in a tidal disruption event
Authors: Wang, Yanan; Lin, Zikun; Wu, Linhui; Lei, Wei-Hua; Wei, Shuyuan; Zhang, Shuang-Nan; Ji, Long; del Palacio, Santiago; Baldi, Ranieri D.; Huang, Yang; Liu, Ji-Feng; Zhang, Bing; Yang, Aiyuan; Chen, Ru-Rong; Zhang, Yangwei; Wang, Ai-Ling; Yang, Lei; Charalampopoulos, Panos; Williams-Baldwin, David R. A.; Yao, Zhu-Heng; Xie, Fu-Guo; Bu, Defu; Feng, Hua; Cao, Xinwu; Wu, Hongzhou; Li, Wenxiong; Qiao, Erlin; Leloudas, Giorgos; Anderson, Joseph P.; Shu, Xinwen; Pasham, Dheeraj R.; Zou, Hu; Nicholl, Matt; Wevers, Thomas; Müller-Bravo, Tomás E.; Wang, Jing; Wei, Jian-Yan; Qiu, Yu-Lei; Guo, Wei-Jian; Gutiérrez, Claudia P.; Gromadzki, Mariusz; Inserra, Cosimo; Makrygianni, Lydia; Onori, Francesca; Petrushevska, Tanja; Altamirano, Diego; Galbany, Lluís; Peréz-Torres, Miguel; Chen, Ting-Wan
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Publication year: 2025
Journal: Science Advances
Article number: eady9068
Volume: 11
Issue: 50
eISSN: 2375-2548
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ady9068
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ady9068
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/505943615
Theories and simulations predict that intense space-time curvature near black holes bends the trajectories of light and matter, driving disk and jet precession under relativistic torques. However, direct observational evidence of disk-jet coprecession remains elusive. Here, we report the most compelling case to date: a tidal disruption event (TDE) exhibiting unprecedented 19.6-day quasi-periodic variations in both x-rays and radio, with x-ray amplitudes exceeding an order of magnitude. The nearly synchronized x-ray and radio variations suggest a shared mechanism regulating the emission regions. We demonstrate that a disk-jet Lense-Thirring precession model successfully reproduces these variations while requiring a low-spin black hole. This study uncovers previously uncharted short-term radio variability in TDEs, highlights the transformative potential of high-cadence radio monitoring, and offers profound insights into disk-jet physics.
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Funding information in the publication:
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant nos. 12588202, 12173103, 12261141691, 12473012, and 12203041; by the New Cornerstone Science Foundation through the New Cornerstone Investigator Program and the XPLORER PRIZE; by the Strategic Priority Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under grant nos. XDB41000000 and XDB0550203; by ANID, Millennium Science Initiative, ICN12_009; and by a research grant (VIL60862) from VILLUM FONDEN. S.d.P. acknowledges support from ERC Advanced grant 789410. P.C. acknowledges support via Research Council of Finland (grant 340613). S.-N.Z. acknowledges support from the NSFC (grant no. 12333007). M.N. is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 948381) and by UK Space Agency grant no. ST/Y000692/1. T.P. acknowledges the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (grants I0-0033, P1-0031, J1-8136, J1-2460, and Z1-1853). H.Z. acknowledges National Key R&D Program of China (grant nos. 2023YFA1607804, 2022YFA1602902, and 2023YFA1608100) and NSFC (grant nos. 12120101003, 12373010, and 12233008). L.G. acknowledges financial support from AGAUR, CSIC, MCIN, and AEI 10.13039/501100011033 under projects PID2023-151307NB-I00, PIE 20215AT016, CEX2020-001058-M, ILINK23001, COOPB2304, and 2021-SGR-01270. C.P.G. acknowledges financial support from the Secretary of Universities and Research (Government of Catalonia) and by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme of the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie and the Beatriu de Pinós 2021 BP 00168 programme, from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) 10.13039/501100011033 under the PID2023-151307NB-I00 SNNEXT project, from Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) under the PIE project 20215AT016 and the program Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2020-001058-M, and from the Departament de Recerca i Universitats de la Generalitat de Catalunya through the 2021-SGR-01270 grant. M.P.-T. acknowledges financial support from the Severo Ochoa grant CEX2021-001131-S and from the Spanish grant PID2023-147883NB-C21, funded by MCIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, as well as support through ERDF/EU. T.-W.C. acknowledges the Yushan Fellow Program by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, for the financial support (MOE-111-YSFMS-0008-001-P1). F.-G.X. and L.W. were supported, in part, by National SKA Program of China (grant nos. 2020SKA0110100 and 2020SKA0110200) and by NSFC (grant nos. 12373017, 12192220, and 12192223). F.O. acknowledges support from MIUR, PRIN 2020 (grant 2020KB33TP) “Multimessenger astronomy in the Einstein Telescope Era (METE)” and from INAF-MINIGRANT (2023): “SeaTiDE - Searching for Tidal Disruption Events with ZTF: the Tidal Disruption Event population in the era of wide field surveys.”
