Infrared echo and late-stage rebrightening of nuclear transient PS1-10adi: exploring Torus by tidal disruption event in active galactic nuclei

Ning Jiang, Tinggui Wang, Guobin Mou, Hui Liu, Liming Dou, Zhenfeng Sheng, Yibo Wang

Published 2018-12-04Version 1

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have been overlooked for a long time but tentatively been investigated recently. We report the discovery of a long-lasting luminous mid-infrared (mid-IR) flare in PS1-10adi, which is a newly-identified highly energetic transient event occurred in AGN. The IR luminosity of PS1-10adi, as well as other analogous events, are at least one order of magnitude higher than all known supernova, but can be well interpreted as the dust echoes of TDEs, whose ultra-high IR energy is reprocessed from the dusty torus around the black hole. The torus dust is sublimating during the early stage of the outburst and probably lead to the observed rapid emergence of Fe II lines. Moreover, the UV-optical rebrightening and contemporaneous X-ray onset after $\sim1500$ rest-frame days since the optical peak is also an intriguing feature of PS1-10adi, which could be attributed to the interaction between the high-velocity outflow and torus. We suggest that the luminous IR echo is a very typical phenomenon of TDEs in AGNs and may provide us an ideal opportunity to explore the torus properties.