It is suggested that a flying-by star in a hot accretion disk may cool the hot accretion disk by the Comptonization of the stellar emission. Such a stellar cooling can be observed in the radio frequency regime since synchrotron luminosity depends strongly on the electron temperature of the accretion flow. If a bright star orbiting around the supermassive black hole cools the hot disk, one should expect a quasi-periodic modulation in radio, or even possible an anti-correlation of luminosities in radio and X-rays. Recently, the unprecedentedly accurate infrared imaging of the Sagittarius A* for about ten years enables us to resolve stars around it and thus determine orbital parameters of the currently closest star S2. We explore the possibility of using such kind of observation to distinguish two quite different physical models for the central engine of the Sagittarius A*, that is, a hot accretion disk model and a jet model. We have attempted to estimate the observables using the observed parameters of the star S2. The relative difference in the electron temperature is a few parts of a thousand at the epoch when the star S2 is near at the pericenter. The relative radio luminosity difference with and without the stellar cooling is also small of order 10-4, particularly even when the star S2 is near at the pericenter. On the basis of our findings we tentatively conclude that even the currently closest pass of the star S2 is insufficiently close enough to meaningfully constrain the nature of the Sagittarius A* and distinguish two competing models. This implies that even though Bower et al. (2002)have found no periodic radio flux variations in their data set from 1981 to 1998, which is naturally expected from the presence of a hot disk, a hot disk model cannot be conclusively ruled out. This is simply because the energy bands they have studied are too high to observe the effect of the star S2 even if it indeed interacts with the hot disk. In other words, even if there is a hot accretion disk the star like S2 has imprints in the frequency range at v ≾ 100 MHz.

Proof correction to the equation in the third paragraph of the DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION has not been carried faithfully to the published version of the paper. The corrected equation should read ≈ 10 -3 M 8 4/3(N*/10 6 pc-3)(σ/300 km s-l)-l(r/rt) yr-1, where Ms is the mass of the SMBH in units of 10 8 M⊙, σ is the virial velocity of the stars, rt is the tidal radius of the SMBH. This estimates the frequency that a star would pass within a sphere with the radius r from the SMBH, rather than the frequency of the tidal disruption event. Therefore, it increases with the mass of the SMBH. However, the loss cone effect should also be taken into account, which reduces the actual event rate. Here, we adopted a factor of one hundred to consider the deficiency from the isotrophic rate. The authors sincerely regret this error.

An elliptical accretion disk may be formed by tidally disrupted debris of a flying-by star in an active galactic nucleus (AGN) or by tidal perturbation due to a companion in a binary black hole system. We investigate the iron Kα line profiles expecting from a geometrically thin, relativistic, elliptical disk in terms of model parameters, and find that a broad and skewed line profile can be reproduced well. Its shape is variable to the model parameters, such as, the emissivity power-law index, the ellipticity of the disk, and the major axis orientation of the elliptical accretion disk. We suggest that our results may be useful to search for such an elliptical disk and consequently the tidal disruption event.

We have studied the long-term X-ray light curve (2-10 keV) of the luminous Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG-2-58-22 by compiling data, from various X-ray satellites, which together cover more than 20 years. We have found two distinct types of time variations in the light curve. One is a gradual and secular decrease of the X-ray flux, and the other is the episodic increase of X-ray flux (or flare) by a factor of 2-4 compared with the level expected from the secular variation. We detected 3 such flares in total; a representative duration for the flares is ~2 years, with intervening quiescent intervals lasting ~6-8 years. We discuss a few possible origins for these variabilities. Though a standard disk instability theory may explain the displayed time variability in the X-ray light curve, the subsequent accretions of stellar debris, from a tidal disruption event caused by a supermassive black hole in MCG-2-58-22, cannot be ruled out as an alternative explanation.

We report results from an analysis of the X-ray archival data on MCG-2-58-22 obtained with Ginga, ROSAT and ASCA. By analyzing both short- and long-term light curves, we find clear time variations, ranging widely from, ~10 3 s to more than several years, in the X-ray energy range 0.1 - 10 keV. In addition, a flare is detected in 1991, overlaid on a gradual, secular flux decrease from 1979 to 1993; this flare has a time scale of about 1 year, and the X-ray flux increased by at least a factor of 3. The implications of these observational results are discussed in terms of accretion flow dynamics near a supermassive black hole.