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Title: iPTF Discovery of the Rapid “Turn-on” of a Luminous Quasar

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [6];  [7];  [8]; ORCiD logo [9]; ORCiD logo [10]; ORCiD logo [11]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [9]; ORCiD logo [12];  [13]
  1. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Dept. of Astronomy; Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Joint Space-Science Inst.
  2. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Dept. of Astronomy
  3. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Joint Space-Science Inst.
  4. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Dept. of Astronomy
  5. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Caltech Optical Observatories; California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
  6. Univ. of Oxford (United Kingdom). Dept. of Astrophysics, Dept. of Physics
  7. National Tsing Hua Univ., Hsinchu (Taiwan). Inst. of Astronomy
  8. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Manchester (United Kingdom)
  9. National Central Univ., Taoyuan City (Taiwan). Graduate Inst. of Astronomy
  10. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States). eScience Inst. and Astronomy Dept.
  11. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden). Oskar Klein Center, Dept. of Astronomy
  12. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Astronomy; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  13. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We present a radio-quiet quasar at z = 0.237 discovered "turning on" by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF). The transient, iPTF 16bco, was detected by iPTF in the nucleus of a galaxy with an archival Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectrum with weak narrow-line emission characteristic of a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER). Our follow-up spectra show the dramatic appearance of broad Balmer lines and a power-law continuum characteristic of a luminous ( Lbol ≈ 1045 erg s-1) type 1 quasar 12 yr later. Our photometric monitoring with PTF from 2009-2012 and serendipitous X-ray observations from the XMM-Newton Slew Survey in 2011 and 2015 constrain the change of state to have occurred less than 500 days before the iPTF detection. An enhanced broad Hα/[O iii] λ5007 line ratio in the type 1 state relative to other changing-look quasars also is suggestive of the most rapid change of state yet observed in a quasar. Here, we argue that the > 10 increase in Eddington ratio inferred from the brightening in UV and X-ray continuum flux is more likely due to an intrinsic change in the accretion rate of a preexisting accretion disk than an external mechanism such as variable obscuration, microlensing, or the tidal disruption of a star. However, further monitoring will be helpful in better constraining the mechanism driving this change of state. The rapid "turn-on" of the quasar is much shorter than the viscous infall timescale of an accretion disk and requires a disk instability that can develop around a ~ 108 M⊙ black hole on timescales less than 1 yr.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF); European Research Council (ERC); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; ERC-2012-StG-307215; NNX16AN85G; 1454816
OSTI ID:
1393611
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 835, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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The supermassive black hole coincident with the luminous transient ASASSN-15lh journal February 2018
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Quasar Photometric Redshifts and Candidate Selection: A New Algorithm Based on Optical and Mid-infrared Photometric Data journal December 2017
Revisiting Optical Tidal Disruption Events with iPTF16axa journal June 2017
On the Mass and Luminosity Functions of Tidal Disruption Flares: Rate Suppression due to Black Hole Event Horizons journal January 2018
Optical, Near-IR, and Sub-mm IFU Observations of the Nearby Dual Active Galactic Nuclei MRK 463 journal February 2018
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EUCLIA—Exploring the UV/Optical Continuum Lag in Active Galactic Nuclei. I. A Model without Light Echoing journal March 2018
Identification of SDSS J141324.27+530527.0 as a New “Changing-look” Quasar with a “Turn-on” Transition journal May 2018
A Mid-IR Selected Changing-look Quasar and Physical Scenarios for Abrupt AGN Fading journal August 2018
Discovery of 21 New Changing-look AGNs in the Northern Sky journal July 2018
Discovery of Dying Active Galactic Nucleus in Arp 187: Experience of Drastic Luminosity Decline within 10 4 yr journal January 2019
Changing-look Quasar Candidates: First Results from Follow-up Spectroscopy of Highly Optically Variable Quasars journal March 2019
Rapid “Turn-on” of Type-1 AGN in a Quiescent Early-type Galaxy SDSS1115+0544 journal March 2019
Gemini Imaging of the Host Galaxies of Changing-look Quasars journal May 2019
SDSS-IV eBOSS Spectroscopy of X-Ray and WISE AGNs in Stripe 82X: Overview of the Demographics of X-Ray- and Mid-infrared-selected Active Galactic Nuclei journal May 2019
A New Class of Changing-look LINERs journal September 2019
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Accretion and Broad Emission Line Physics from a Hypervariable Quasar journal October 2019
An Unusual Mid-infrared Flare in a Type 2 AGN: An Obscured Turning-on AGN or Tidal Disruption Event? journal November 2019
Two New “Turn-off” Changing-look Active Galactic Nuclei and Implication on “Partially Obscured” AGNs journal December 2019
Initial Results from a Systematic Search for Changing-look Active Galactic Nuclei Selected via Mid-infrared Variability journal January 2020
Sifting for Sapphires: Systematic Selection of Tidal Disruption Events in iPTF journal September 2018
Catalogues of active galactic nuclei from Gaia and unWISE data text January 2019
The supermassive black hole coincident with the luminous transient ASASSN-15lh text January 2018
Optical, Near-IR, and Sub-mm IFU Observations of the Nearby Dual Active Galactic Nuclei MRK 463 text January 2018
Revisiting optical tidal disruption events with iPTF16axa text January 2017
On the mass and luminosity functions of tidal disruption flares: rate suppression due to black hole event horizons text January 2017
A model for AGN variability on multiple timescales text January 2018
Changing-Look Quasar Candidates: First Results from Follow-up Spectroscopy of Highly Optically Variable Quasars text January 2018
Discovery of Dying Active Galactic Nucleus in Arp 187: Experience of Drastic Luminosity Decline within $10^4$ years text January 2018
MUSE observations of a changing-look AGN I: The re-appearance of the broad emission lines text January 2019
Initial results from a systematic search for changing-look active galactic nuclei selected via mid-infrared variability text January 2019
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Accretion and Broad Emission Line Physics from a Hypervariable Quasar text January 2019

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79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
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