Tidal disruption events from the first XMM-Newton slew survey

¹ Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), ESAC Campus, PO Box 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain
² XMM SOC, ESAC, Apartado 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
³ Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
⁴ Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Leicester University, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK

^a e-mail: pilar.esquej@cab.inta-csic.es

Abstract

Observations over the past decade have revealed that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) likely reside at the centres of most or all bulge galaxies. Confirmation of their dormant presence in non-active galaxies is difficult to obtain. An unavoidable consequence of the existence of remnant SMBHs is the detection of a tidal disruption event. This is discovered as flaring radiation produced when a star is tidally disrupted and subsequently accreted by the black hole. Two of these exceptional events have been discovered by XMM-Newton in the first slew catalogue, NGC 3599 and SDSS J132341.97+482701.3. Here we show their evolution up to four years after the peak of the outburst including a detailed analysis of NGC 3599, for which novel follow-up observations are presented here.