A spectacular multi-wavelength transient associated with an off-axis relativistic jet

Abstract

Many of the most luminous extragalactic transients originate from the accretion of material onto a black hole (BH) via core-collapse, stellar mergers, or the tidal disruption of a star. Some produce energetic multi-wavelength emission, displaying short, blue optical flares and bright, long-lived radio afterglows. In rare cases, these have also launched powerful relativistic jets almost exclusively detected on-axis via high-energy emission. Here we report AT 2019ijn, a radio transient discovered in the Very Large Array Sky Survey, associated with a powerful relativistic jet viewed off-axis and accompanied by a luminous ($\nu L_{\nu, opt} \sim 10^{44}$ erg/s) optical transient. Originating from a star-forming dwarf galaxy at z = 0.273, AT 2019ijn's optical flare exhibited a fast rise ($t_{rise, rest} \sim 7$ d) and shallow decline ($t_{dec, rest} > 38$ d), followed a year later by an energetic ($E \sim 2\times10^{52}$ erg) radio counterpart persisting for $>6$ years. These combined properties are unprecedented and preclude known classes of stellar explosion powered by core-collapse. Instead, the implied accretion onto a BH and associated off-axis jet invokes an exotic BH-stellar merger or a jetted tidal disruption event (TDE) by a $10^4 - 10^6 M_\odot$ black hole. Favoring a TDE, this work determines the jet-launching occurrence, with the low redshift allowing constraints on the late-time evolution in contrast to prior events. Upcoming radio sky surveys will offer an unprecedented new window for further discovery of AT 2019ijn-like off-axis relativistic transients.