Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) should be an inevitable consequence of the hierarchical growth of massive galaxies through mergers, and the strongest sirens of gravitational waves (GWs) in the cosmos. And yet, their direct detection has rem
ained elusive due to the compact (sub-parsec) orbital separations of gravitationally bound SMBHBs. Here we exploit a theoretically predicted signature of a SMBHB in the time domain: periodic variability caused by a mass accretion rate that is modulated by the binarys orbital motion. We report our first significant periodically varying quasar detection from the systematic search in the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) Medium Deep Survey. Our SMBHB candidate, PSO J334.2028+01.4075, is a luminous radio-loud quasar at $z=2.060$, with extended baseline photometry from the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, as well as archival spectroscopy from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey. The observed period ($542 pm 15$ days) and estimated black hole mass ($log (M_{rm BH}/M_odot) = 9.97 pm 0.50$), correspond to an orbital separation of $7^{+8}_{-4}$ Schwarzschild radii ($sim 0.006^{+0.007}_{-0.003}$ pc), assuming the rest-frame period of the quasar variability traces the orbital period of the binary. This SMBHB candidate, discovered at the peak redshift for SMBH mergers, is in a physically stable configuration for a circumbinary accretion disk, and within the regime of GW-driven orbital decay. Our search with PS1 is a benchmark study for the exciting capabilities of LSST, which will have orders of magnitude larger survey power, and will potentially pinpoint the locations of thousands of SMBHBs in the variable night sky.
In pp collisions at 1.25 GeV kinetic energy, the HADES collaboration aimed at investigating the di-electron production related to $Delta$ (1232) Dalitz decay ($Delta^+ to pe^+e^-$). In order to constrain the models predicting the cross section and th
e production mechanisms of $Delta$ resonance, the hadronic channels have been measured and studied in parallel to the leptonic channels. The analyses of $ppto nppi^+$ and $ppto pppi^0$ channels and the comparison to simulations are presented in this contribution, in particular the angular distributions being sensitive to $Delta$ production and decay. The accurate acceptance corrections have been performed as well, which could be tested in all the phase space region thanks to the high statistic data. These analyses result in an overall agreement with the one-$pi$ exchange model and previous data.
