Hidden Black Holes Revealed: Radio Imaging Pins Down an Off-Center Star Devourment

The VLA C-band observations of AT 2023mfm resolve a 1.06 kpc offset radio source from the host nucleus at 6 GHz, confirming the transient's off-nuclear location first flagged in ZTF and Pan-STARRS data. This single-event study relies on high-resolution interferometry rather than optical spectroscopy alone, exposing a limitation of many TDE searches that assume nuclear positions. The work remains a preprint and has not undergone peer review, with analysis resting on one well-observed case rather than a statistical sample. Synthesizing this with earlier radio follow-up of nuclear TDEs (e.g., Alexander et al. 2020, ApJ) and systematic off-nuclear candidate searches highlights a pattern: wandering or recoiling supermassive black holes may be more common than optical surveys suggest, especially in post-merger galaxies. What the original arXiv posting understates is the broader implication for intermediate-mass black hole demographics; an off-center TDE like this could trace a stripped dwarf-galaxy nucleus rather than a classical wandering SMBH, a distinction future multi-wavelength campaigns must resolve. Radio imaging thus serves as a critical validator where astrometric uncertainties in optical data leave room for misclassification.