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Alongside the recent increase in discoveries of tidal disruption events(TDEs) have come an increasing number of ambiguous nuclear transients (ANTs).These ANTs are characterized by hot blackbody-like UV/optical spectral energydistributions (SEDs) and smooth photometric evolution, often with hardpowerlaw-like X-ray emission. ANTs are likely exotic TDEs or smooth flaresoriginating in otherwise narrow-line active galactic nuclei (AGNs). While theiremission in the UV/optical and X-ray has been relatively well-explored, theirinfrared (IR) emission has not been studied in detail. Here we use the NEOWISEmission and its low-cadence mapping of the entire sky to study mid-infrareddust reprocessing echoes of ANTs. We study 19 ANTs, finding significant MIRflares in 18 objects for which we can estimate an IR luminosity and temperatureevolution. The dust reprocessing echoes show a wide range in IR luminosities($\sim 10^{42} - 10^{45}$ erg s$^{-1}$) with blackbody temperatures largelyconsistent with sublimation temperature of graphite grains. Excluding the twosources possibly associated with luminous supernovae (ASASSN-15lh andASASSN-17jz), the dust covering fractions (f$_c$) for detected IR flares liebetween 0.05 and 0.91, with a mean of f$_c$ = 0.29 for all ANTs (includinglimits) and f$_c$ = $0.38 \pm 0.04$ for detections. These covering fractionsare much higher than optically-selected TDEs and similar to AGNs. We interpretthe high covering fractions in ANT host galaxies as evidence for the presenceof a dusty torus.

Mid-Infrared Echoes of Ambiguous Nuclear Transients Reveal High Dust Covering Fractions: Evidence for Dusty Tori