Hyperluminous Supersoft X-Ray Sources in the Chandra Catalog

Hyperluminous supersoft X-ray sources (HSSs), such as bright extragalactic sources characterized by particularly soft X-ray spectra, offer a unique opportunity to study accretion onto supermassive black holes in extreme conditions. Examples of hyperluminous supersoft sources are tidal disruption eve...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Andrea Sacchi, Kevin Paggeot, Steven Dillmann, Juan Rafael Martínez-Galarza, Peter Kosec
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
Series:The Astrophysical Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/adc256
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Hyperluminous supersoft X-ray sources (HSSs), such as bright extragalactic sources characterized by particularly soft X-ray spectra, offer a unique opportunity to study accretion onto supermassive black holes in extreme conditions. Examples of hyperluminous supersoft sources are tidal disruption events (TDEs), systems exhibiting quasiperiodic eruptions, changing-look active galactic nuclei, and anomalous nuclear transients. Although these objects are rare phenomena among the population of X-ray sources, we developed an efficient algorithm to identify promising candidates exploiting archival observations. In this work, we present the results of a search for HSSs in the recently released Chandra catalog of serendipitous X-ray sources. This archival search has been performed via both a manual implementation of the algorithm we developed and a novel machine learning–based approach. This search identified a new TDE, which might have occurred in an intermediate-mass black hole. This event occurred between 2001 and 2002, making it one of the first TDEs ever observed by Chandra.
ISSN:1538-4357