Revealing a multi-zone circumnuclear dust response in UGC 11487 through phase-resolved WISE W1--W2 diagnostics
Abstract
Mid-infrared (MIR) flares provide a direct probe of dust reprocessing in obscured tidal disruption event (TDE) candidates when the primary optical or ultraviolet flare is weak, missed, or strongly attenuated. We present a phase-resolved analysis of the WISE/NEOWISE W1-W2 evolution of the MIR-selected TDE candidate UGC 11487/WTP14adeqka over 2014-2024. We combine timing, colour, and flux diagnostics with phenomenological modelling, hydrodynamically motivated clumpy dust-echo calculations, and an aperture-matched ultraviolet-to-radio spectral energy distribution of the host. The decade-long flare shows a delayed and broader W2 response, colour hysteresis, and cooling from approximately 900 K to 500-600 K. Positive-fluence centroids yield a preferred delay of 224 +/− 45 d, corresponding to 0.188 +/− 0.038 pc. The effective infrared luminosity peaks at approximately 3 x 1043 erg s−1, and the integrated infrared energy is (2.9−3.8) x 1051 erg. A single self-similar MIR response is strongly disfavoured, with Delta BIC = 281.7, while the preferred compact description is a two-component phenomenological model. Representative hydro-clumpy calculations reproduce the empirical diagnostics in a structured, multi-zone dust-response scenario. The host is a moderately star-forming isolated barred disc without a dominant persistent active galactic nucleus component. These results support an obscured TDE-like accretion transient reprocessed by structured circumnuclear dust and show that phase-resolved WISE diagnostics can recover characteristic sub-parsec response scales in obscured accretion-powered nuclear transients.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{izviekova2026revealing,
title = {{Revealing a multi-zone circumnuclear dust response in UGC 11487 through phase-resolved WISE W1--W2 diagnostics}},
author = {I. O. Izviekova and O. V. Kompaniiets and I. B. Vavilova and D. V. Dobrycheva},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.17815},
eprint = {2607.17815},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17815},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Revealing a multi-zone circumnuclear dust response in UGC 11487 through phase-resolved WISE W1--W2 diagnostics
AU - I. O. Izviekova
AU - O. V. Kompaniiets
AU - I. B. Vavilova
AU - D. V. Dobrycheva
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.17815
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17815
AB - Mid-infrared (MIR) flares provide a direct probe of dust reprocessing in obscured tidal disruption event (TDE) candidates when the primary optical or ultraviolet flare is weak, missed, or strongly attenuated. We present a phase-resolved analysis of the WISE/NEOWISE W1-W2 evolution of the MIR-selected TDE candidate UGC 11487/WTP14adeqka over 2014-2024. We combine timing, colour, and flux diagnostics with phenomenological modelling, hydrodynamically motivated clumpy dust-echo calculations, and an aperture-matched ultraviolet-to-radio spectral energy distribution of the host. The decade-long flare shows a delayed and broader W2 response, colour hysteresis, and cooling from approximately 900 K to 500-600 K. Positive-fluence centroids yield a preferred delay of 224 +/− 45 d, corresponding to 0.188 +/− 0.038 pc. The effective infrared luminosity peaks at approximately 3 x 10^43 erg s^−1, and the integrated infrared energy is (2.9−3.8) x 10^51 erg. A single self-similar MIR response is strongly disfavoured, with Delta BIC = 281.7, while the preferred compact description is a two-component phenomenological model. Representative hydro-clumpy calculations reproduce the empirical diagnostics in a structured, multi-zone dust-response scenario. The host is a moderately star-forming isolated barred disc without a dominant persistent active galactic nucleus component. These results support an obscured TDE-like accretion transient reprocessed by structured circumnuclear dust and show that phase-resolved WISE diagnostics can recover characteristic sub-parsec response scales in obscured accretion-powered nuclear transients.
ER -