Detection of disk-jet coprecession in a tidal disruption event
- Yanan Wang
- Zikun Lin
- Linhui Wu
- Wei-Hua Lei
- Shuyuan Wei
- Shuang-Nan Zhang
- Long Ji
- Santiago del Palacio
- Ranieri D. Baldi
- Yang Huang
- Ji-Feng Liu
- Bing Zhang
- Aiyuan Yang
- Ru-Rong Chen
- Yangwei Zhang
- Ai-Ling Wang
- Lei Yang
- Panos Charalampopoulos
- David R. A. Williams-Baldwin
- Zhu-Heng Yao
- Fu-Guo Xie
- Defu Bu
- Hua Feng
- Xinwu Cao
- Hongzhou Wu
- Wenxiong Li
- Erlin Qiao
- Giorgos Leloudas
- Joseph P. Anderson
- Xinwen Shu
- Dheeraj R. Pasham
- Hu Zou
- Matt Nicholl
- Thomas Wevers
- Tomás E. Müller-Bravo
- Jing Wang
- Jian-Yan Wei
- Yu-Lei Qiu
- Wei-Jian Guo
- Claudia P. Gutiérrez
- Mariusz Gromadzki
- Cosimo Inserra
- Lydia Makrygianni
- Francesca Onori
- Tanja Petrushevska
- Diego Altamirano
- Lluís Galbany
- Miguel Pérez-Torres
- Ting-Wan Chen
2025-12-10
Theories and simulations predict that intense space-time curvature near black holes bends the trajectories of light and matter, driving disk and jet precession under relativistic torques. However, direct observational evidence of disk-jet coprecession remains elusive. Here, we report the most compelling case to date: a tidal disruption event (TDE) exhibiting unprecedented 19.6-day quasi-periodic variations in both x-rays and radio, with x-ray amplitudes exceeding an order of magnitude. The nearly synchronized x-ray and radio variations suggest a shared mechanism regulating the emission regions. We demonstrate that a disk-jet Lense-Thirring precession model successfully reproduces these variations while requiring a low-spin black hole. This study uncovers previously uncharted short-term radio variability in TDEs, highlights the transformative potential of high-cadence radio monitoring, and offers profound insights into disk-jet physics.