Revealing an Oscillating and Contracting Compact Corona near the Event Horizon of the Supermassive Black Hole in 1ES 1927+654

作者：Qing-Cang Shui, Shu Zhang, Shuang‐Nan Zhang, Hua Feng, Yupeng Chen, Long Ji, Ling-Da Kong, Liang Zhang, Jing-Qiang Peng, Peng-Ju Wang · 发表于：The Astrophysical Journal Letters · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.3847/2041-8213/ae2464 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations、Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena、Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena

Abstract Dynamic processes in the accretion flow near black holes produce X-ray flux variability, sometimes quasiperiodic. Determining its physical origin is key to mapping the accretion geometry but remains unresolved. We perform a novel phase-resolved analysis on a newly discovered quasiperiodic oscillation (QPO) in the active galactic nucleus 1ES 1927+654. For the first time in a supermassive black hole (SMBH), we detect a unique “U”-shaped QPO lag–energy spectrum and observe coronal spectral variability over the QPO phase. We find that the QPO is adequately explained by plasma resonant oscillations within a corona. The modeling of the QPO spectral properties reveals that the corona is contracting and confined to regions of only a few gravitational radii near the SMBH, consistent with theoretical predictions for a decreasing QPO period of near 10 minutes. These results present the first observational evidence for an oscillating and contracting compact corona around an SMBH.