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Updated: Jan 9, 2026

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
Detection of disk-jet coprecession in a tidal disruption event
Yanan Wang1, Zikun Lin1,2, Linhui Wu3
1National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20A Datun Road, Beijing 100101, China.
None:
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.
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