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Register a new userThe nature of massive black hole binary candidates: II. Spectral energy distribution atlas
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Recoiling supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are considered one plausible physical mechanism to explain high velocity shifts between narrow and broad emission lines sometimes observed in quasar spectra. If the sphere of influence of the recoiling SMBH is such that only the accretion disc is bound, the dusty torus would be left behind, hence the SED should then present distinctive features (i.e. a mid-infrared deficit). Here we present results from fitting the Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of 32 Type-1 AGN with high velocity shifts between broad and narrow lines. The aim is to find peculiar properties in the multi-wavelength SEDs of such objects by comparing their physical parameters (torus and disc luminosity, intrinsic reddening, and size of the 12$mu$m emitter) with those estimated from a control sample of $sim1000$ emph{typical} quasars selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in the same redshift range. We find that all sources, with the possible exception of J1154+0134, analysed here present a significant amount of 12~$mu$m emission. This is in contrast with a scenario of a SMBH displaced from the center of the galaxy, as expected for an undergoing recoil event.
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Theoretically, bound binaries of massive black holes are expected as the natural outcome of mergers of massive galaxies. From the observational side, however, massive black hole binaries remain elusive. Velocity shifts between narrow and broad emission lines in quasar spectra are considered a promising observational tool to search for spatially unresolved, dynamically bound binaries. In this series of papers we investigate the nature of such candidates through analyses of their spectra, images and multi-wavelength spectral energy distributions. Here we investigate the properties of the optical spectra, including the evolution of the broad line profiles, of all the sources identified in our previous study. We find a diverse phenomenology of broad and narrow line luminosities, widths, shapes, ionization conditions and time variability, which we can broadly ascribe to 4 classes based on the shape of the broad line profiles: 1) Objects with bell-shaped broad lines with big velocity shifts (>1000 km/s) compared to their narrow lines show a variety of broad line widths and luminosities, modest flux variations over a few years, and no significant change in the broad line peak wavelength. 2) Objects with double-peaked broad emission lines tend to show very luminous and broadened lines, and little time variability. 3) Objects with asymmetric broad emission lines show a broad range of broad line luminosities and significant variability of the line profiles. 4) The remaining sources tend to show moderate to low broad line luminosities, and can be ascribed to diverse phenomena. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of massive black hole binary searches.
The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has recently reported evidence for the presence of a common stochastic signal across their array of pulsars. The origin of this signal is still unclear. One of the possibilities is that it is due to a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the $sim 1-10,{rm nHz}$ frequency region. Taking the NANOGrav observational result at face value, we show that this signal would be fully consistent with a SGWB produced by an unresolved population of in-spiralling massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) predicted by current theoretical models. Considering an astrophysically agnostic model we find that the MBHB merger rate is loosely constrained to the range $10^{-11} - 2$ $mathrm{Mpc}^{-3},mathrm{Gyr}^{-1}$. Including additional constraints from galaxy pairing fractions and MBH-bulge scaling relations, we find that the MBHB merger rate is $10^{-5} - 5times10^{-4}$ $mathrm{Mpc}^{-3},mathrm{Gyr}^{-1}$, the MBHB merger time-scale is $le 3,mathrm{Gyr}$ and the norm of the $M_mathrm{BH}-M_mathrm{bulge}$ relation $ge 1.2times 10^{8},M_odot$ (all intervals quoted at 90% confidence). Regardless of the astrophysical details of MBHB assembly, this result would imply that a sufficiently large population of massive black holes pair up, form binaries and merge within a Hubble time.
We describe some key astrophysical processes driving the formation and evolution of black hole binaries of different nature, from stellar-mass to supermassive systems. In the first part, we focus on the mainstream channels proposed for the formation of stellar mass binaries relevant to ground-based gravitational wave detectors, namely the {it field} and the {it dynamical} scenarios. For the field scenario, we highlight the relevant steps in the evolution of the binary, including mass transfer, supernovae explosions and kicks, common envelope and gravitational wave emission. For the dynamical scenario, we describe the main physical processes involved in the formation of star clusters and the segregation of black holes in their centres. We then identify the dynamical processes leading to binary formation, including three-body capture, exchanges and hardening. The second part of the notes is devoted to massive black hole formation and evolution, including the physics leading to mass accretion and binary formation. Throughout the notes, we provide several step-by-step pedagogical derivations, that should be particularly suited to undergraduates and PhD students, but also to gravitational wave physicists interested in approaching the subject of gravitational wave sources from an astrophysical perspective.
The cosmic spectral energy distribution (CSED) is the total emissivity as a function of wavelength of galaxies in a given cosmic volume. We compare the observed CSED from the UV to the submm to that computed from the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, post-processed with stellar population synthesis models and including dust radiative transfer using the SKIRT code. The agreement with the data is better than 0.15 dex over the entire wavelength range at redshift $z=0$, except at UV wavelengths where the EAGLE model overestimates the observed CSED by up to a factor 2. Global properties of the CSED as inferred from CIGALE fits, such as the stellar mass density, mean star formation density, and mean dust-to-stellar-mass ratio, agree to within better than 20 per cent. At higher redshift, EAGLE increasingly underestimates the CSED at optical-NIR wavelengths with the FIR/submm emissivity underestimated by more than a factor of 5 by redshift $z=1$. We believe that these differences are due to a combination of incompleteness of the EAGLE-SKIRT database, the small simulation volume and the consequent lack of luminous galaxies, and our lack of knowledge on the evolution of the characteristics of the interstellar dust in galaxies. The impressive agreement between the simulated and observed CSED at lower $z$ confirms that the combination of EAGLE and SKIRT dust processing yields a fairly realistic representation of the local Universe.
We propose a novel method to test the binary black hole (BBH) nature of compact binaries detectable by gravitational wave (GW) interferometers and hence constrain the parameter space of other exotic compact objects. The spirit of the test lies in the no-hair conjecture for black holes where all properties of a black hole are characterised by the mass and the spin of the black hole. The method relies on observationally measuring the quadrupole moments of the compact binary constituents induced due to their spins. If the compact object is a Kerr black hole (BH), its quadrupole moment is expressible solely in terms of its mass and spin. Otherwise, the quadrupole moment can depend on additional parameters (such as equation of state of the object). The higher order spin effects in phase and amplitude of a gravitational waveform, which explicitly contains the spin-induced quadrupole moments of compact objects, hence uniquely encodes the nature of the compact binary. Thus we argue that an independent measurement of the spin-induced quadrupole moment of the compact binaries from GW observations can provide a unique way to distinguish binary BH systems from binaries consisting of exotic compact objects.
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