Abstract for Proposal 096333
Expanding the Diversity of Observed Tidal Disruption Events
Past work on tidal disruption events (TDEs) has demonstrated that these
accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) exhibit properties distinct
from those of classical AGN. We are now expanding the search criteria
for optical TDEs to novel environments and fainter fluxes. TDEs found
in off-nuclear locations or faint dwarf host galaxies will enable the
discovery of intermediate-mass black holes, while objects discovered
at fainter optical fluxes expand the frontiers of TDE luminosity, at
both the low and high ends. We propose to obtain multiepoch XMM-Newton
observations of 5 new TDEs discovered in ZTF Phase III from our expanded
search criteria along with coordinated C band VLA observations to
characterize the accretion flows in these objects and compare to
traditional optically selected TDEs.
Details on Observing Strategy and Trigger Criteria
We will trigger on TDEs that meet one of our expanded search criteria
of: (i) in off-nuclear locations; (ii) hosted by dwarf galaxies; (iii)
have unusually high optical luminosities (M_g < -20 mag); OR (iv) have
unusually low optical luminosities (M_g > -18 mag). There are 5 TDE
targets in this program. The first activation requires a response time of
15 days after the initial trigger. The first ToO follow up observation is
30-50 days after that first activation. For the late TDEs, we require f_x
(0.3-10 keV) > 3e-14 erg/cm2/s from our previous observation. The late
observation is to be taken 50-150 days after the previous epoch.