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Browsing by Author "Page, Dany"

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    A luminous X-ray outburst from an intermediate-mass black hole in an off-centre star cluster
    (Nature Portfolio, 2018-06-14) Lin, Dacheng; Strader, Jay; Carrasco, Eleazar R.; Page, Dany; Romanowsky, Aaron J.; Homan, Jeroen; Irwin, Jimmy A.; Remillard, Ronald A.; Godet, Olivier; Webb, Natalie A.; Baumgardt, Holger; Wijnands, Rudy; Barret, Didier; Duc, Pierre-Alain; Brodie, Jean P.; Gwyn, Stephen D. J.; University System Of New Hampshire; University of New Hampshire; Michigan State University; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; California State University System; San Jose State University; University of California System; University of California Santa Cruz; Eureka Scientific; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University of Queensland; University of Amsterdam; CNRS - National Institute for Earth Sciences & Astronomy (INSU); UDICE-French Research Universities; Universites de Strasbourg Etablissements Associes; Universite de Strasbourg; National Research Council Canada
    A unique signature for the presence of massive black holes in very dense stellar regions is occasional giant-amplitude out-bursts of multi-wavelength radiation from tidal disruption and subsequent accretion of stars that make a close approach to the black holes(1). Previous strong tidal disruption event (TDE) candidates were all associated with the centres of largely isolated galaxies(2-6). Here, we report the discovery of a luminous X-ray outburst from a massive star cluster at a projected distance of 12.5 kpc from the centre of a large lenticular galaxy. The luminosity peaked at similar to 10(43) erg s(-1) and decayed systematically over 10 years, approximately following a trend that supports the identification of the event as a TDE. The X-ray spectra were all very soft, with emission confined to be less than or similar to 3.0 keV, and could be described with a standard thermal disk. The disk cooled significantly as the luminosity decreased-a key thermal-state signature often observed in accreting stellar-mass black holes. This thermal-state signature, coupled with very high luminosities, ultrasoft X-ray spectra and the characteristic power-law evolution of the light curve, provides strong evidence that the source contains an intermediate-mass black hole with a mass tens of thousand times that of the solar mass. This event demonstrates that one of the most effective means of detecting intermediate-mass black holes is through X-ray flares from TDEs in star clusters.