Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries are expected in a Lambda CDM cosmology given that most (if not all) massive galaxies contain a massive black hole at their center. So far, however, direct evidence for such binaries has been elusive. We use cross-correlation to search for temporal velocity shifts in the MgII broad emission lines of 0.36 < z < 2 quasars with multiple observations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For ~ 10^9 Msun BHs in SMBH binaries, we are sensitive to velocity drifts for binary separations of ~ 0.1 pc with orbital periods of ~100 years. We find seven candidate sub-pc--scale binaries with velocity shifts > 3.4 sigma ~ 280 km/s, where sigma is our systematic error. Comparing the detectability of SMBH binaries with the number of candidates (N < 7), we can rule out that most 10^9 Msun BHs exist in ~ 0.03-0.2 pc scale binaries, in a scenario where binaries stall at sub-pc scales for a Hubble time. We further constrain that < one-third of quasars host SMBH binaries after considering gas-assisted sub-pc evolution of SMBH binaries, although this result is very sensitive to the assumed size of the broad line region. We estimate the detectability of SMBH binaries with ongoing or next-generation surveys (e.g., BOSS, Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph), taking into account the evolution of the sub-parsec binary in circumbinary gas disks. These future observations will provide longer time baselines for searches similar to ours and may in turn constrain the evolutionary scenarios of SMBH binaries.
We present MgII-based black hole mass estimates for 27,602 quasars with rest-frame UV spectra available in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Three. This estimation is possible due to the existence of an empirical correlation between the radius of the broad line region and the continuum luminosity at 3000 Angstroms. We regenerate this correlation by applying our measurement method to UV spectra of low-redshift quasars in the HST/IUE databases which have corresponding reverberation mapping estimates of the Hbeta broad line region's radius. Our mass estimation method uses the line dispers…
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are designed to detect the predicted gravitational wave (GW) background produced by a cosmological population of supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. In this contribution I review the physics of such GW background, highlighting its dependence on the overall binary population, the relation between SMBHs and their hosts, and their coupling with the stellar and gaseous environment. The latter is particularly relevant when it drives the binaries to extreme eccentricities (e>0.9), which might be the case for stellar-driven systems. This causes a substantial suppressi…
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) might detect gravitational waves (GWs) from massive black hole (MBH) binaries within this decade. The signal is expected to be an incoherent superposition of several nearly-monochromatic waves of different strength. The brightest sources might be individually resolved, and the overall deconvolved, at least partially, in its individual components. In this paper we extend the maximum-likelihood based method developed in Babak & Sesana 2012, to search for individual MBH binaries in PTA data. We model the signal as a collection of circular monochromatic binaries, each c…
Spin induced precessional modulations of gravitational wave signals from supermassive black hole binaries can improve the estimation of luminosity distance to the source by space based gravitational wave missions like the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We study how this impacts the ablity of LISA to do cosmology, specifically, to measure the dark energy equation of state (EOS) parameter $w$. Using the $Λ$CDM model of cosmology, we show that observations of precessing binaries by LISA, combined with a redshift measurement, can improve the determination of $w$ up to an order of magni…
Given the stellar density near the galactic center, close encounters between compact object binaries and the supermassive black hole are a plausible occurrence. We present results from a numerical study of close to 13 million such encounters. Consistent with previous studies, we corroborate that, for binary systems tidally disrupted by the black hole, the component of the binary remaining bound to the hole has eccentricity ~ 0.97 and circularizes dramatically by the time it enters the classical LISA band. Our results also show that the population of surviving binaries merits attention. These b…
Detection of electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of pre-coalescence binaries has very important implications for our understanding of the evolution of these systems as well as the associated accretion physics. In addition, a combination of EM and gravitational wave signatures observed from coalescing supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) would provide independent measurements of redshift and luminosity distance, thus allowing for high precision cosmological measurements. However, a statistically significant sample of these objects is yet to be attained and finding them observationally has pro…
We study the collapse of rapidly rotating supermassive stars that may have formed in the early Universe. By self-consistently simulating the dynamics from the onset of collapse using three-dimensional general-relativistic hydrodynamics with fully dynamical spacetime evolution, we show that seed perturbations in the progenitor can lead to the formation of a system of two high-spin supermassive black holes, which inspiral and merge under the emission of powerful gravitational radiation that could be observed at redshifts z>10 with the DECIGO or Big Bang Observer gravitational-wave observatories,…
We study the capability of a pulsar timing array (PTA) to individually resolve and localize in the sky monochromatic gravitational wave (GW) sources. Given a cosmological population of inspiralling massive black hole binaries, their observable signal in the PTA domain is expected to be a superposition of several nearly-monochromatic GWs of different strength. In each frequency bin, the signal is neither a stochastic background nor perfectly resolvable in its individual components. In this context, it is crucial to explore how the information encoded in the spatial distribution of the array of …
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) may eventually be able to detect not only the stochastic gravitational-wave (GW) background of SMBH binaries, but also individual, particularly massive binaries whose signals stick out above the background. In this contribution, we discuss the possibility of identifying and studying such `resolved' binaries through their electromagnetic emission. The host galaxies of such binaries are themselves expected to be also very massive and rare, so that out to redshifts z~2 a unique massive galaxy may be identified as the host. At higher redshifts, the PTA error boxes are l…
We consider the formation of extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) sourced from a stellar cusp centred on a primary supermassive black hole (SMBH) and perturbed by an inspiraling less massive secondary SMBH. The problem is approached numerically, assuming the stars are non-interacting over these short timescales and performing an ensemble of restricted three-body integrations. From these simulations we see that not only can EMRIs be produced during this process, but the dynamics are also quite rich. In particular, most of the EMRIs are produced through a process akin to the Kozai-Lidov mechanis…
We investigate the theoretical expectations for detections of supermassive binary black holes that can be identified as sub-parsec luminous quasars. To-date, only two candidates have been selected in a sample comprising 17,500 sources selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar Catalog at z<0.70 (Boroson & Lauer 2009) In this Letter, we use models of assembly and growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in hierarchical cosmologies to study the statistics and observability of binary quasars at sub-parsec separations. Our goal is twofold: (1) test if such a scarce number of binari…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) in galactic nuclei are thought to be a common by-product of major galaxy mergers. We use simple disk models for the circumbinary gas and for the binary-disk interaction to follow the orbital decay of SMBHBs with a range of total masses (M) and mass ratios (q), through physically distinct regions of the disk, until gravitational waves (GWs) take over their evolution. Prior to the GW-driven phase, the viscous decay is in the stalled "secondary-dominated" regime. SMBHBs spend a non-negligible fraction of 10^7 years at orbital periods t_var between a day a…
We present AGN from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) having double-peaked profiles of [OIII] 5007,4959 and other narrow emission-lines, motivated by the prospect of finding candidate binary AGN. These objects were identified by means of a visual examination of 21,592 quasars at z < 0.7 in SDSS Data Release 7 (DR7). Of the spectra with adequate signal-to-noise, 148 spectra exhibit a double-peaked [OIII] profile. Of these, 86 are Type 1 AGN and 62 are Type 2 AGN. Only two give the appearance of possibly being optically resolved double AGN in the SDSS images, but many show close companions or …
Pulsar timing observations are used to place constraints on the rate of coalescence of supermassive black-hole (SMBH) binaries as a function of mass and redshift. In contrast to the indirect constraints obtained from other techniques, pulsar timing observations provide a direct constraint on the black-hole merger rate. This is possible since pulsar timing is sensitive to the gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by these sources in the final stages of their evolution. We find that upper bounds calculated from the recently published Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data are just above theoretical predict…
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are placing increasingly stringent constraints on the strain amplitude of continuous gravitational waves emitted by supermassive black hole binaries on subparsec scales. In this paper, we incorporate independent information about the dynamical masses $M_{bh}$ of supermassive black holes in specific galaxies at known distances and use this additional information to further constrain whether or not those galaxies could host a detectable supermassive black hole binary. We estimate the strain amplitudes from individual binaries as a function of binary mass ratio for two…
Gravitational waves (GWs) in the nano-hertz band are great tools for understanding the cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei. We consider SMBH binaries in high-$z$ ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) as sources of a stochastic GW background (GWB). ULIRGs are likely associated with gas-rich galaxy mergers containing SMBHs that possibly occur at most once in the life of galaxies, unlike multiple dry mergers at low redshift. Adopting a well-established sample of ULIRGs, we study the properties of the GWB due to coalescing binary SMBHs in these galaxie…
Starting from the quasar sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) for which the CIV line is observed, we use an analysis scheme to derive the z-dependence of the maximum mass of active black holes, which overcomes the problems related to the Malmquist bias. The same procedure is applied to the low redshift sample of SDSS quasars for which Hbeta measurements are available. Combining with the results from the previously studied MgII sample, we find that the maximum mass of the quasar population increases as (1+z)^(1.64+/-0.04) in the redshift range 0.1<z<4, which includes the epoch of maxim…
In this letter we carry out the first systematic investigation of the expected gravitational wave (GW) background generated by supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries in the nHz frequency band accessible to pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). We take from the literature several estimates of the redshift dependent galaxy mass function and of the fraction of close galaxy pairs to derive a wide range of galaxy merger rates. We then exploit empirical black hole-host relations to populate merging galaxies with SMBHs. The result of our procedure is a collection of a large number of phenomenological SMBH bi…
We illustrate a novel signature of black hole binaries from their effect on the kinematics of water maser emission in their environments. With the help of simulations, we establish the condition for clumps to mase based on their coherence lengths calibrated to those of the known maser galaxy NGC 4258. This is then used to identify masing clumps around a binary black hole system, and quantify the kinematic and spectral differences relative to the single black hole case. For some generic circumstances, blue-shifted masers around a binary black hole are found to preferentially follow the Kepleria…
Pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to gravitational waves from supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries at orbital separations of << 1pc. There is currently an observational paucity of such systems, although they are central figures in studies of galaxy evolution, merger dynamics, and active nucleus formation. We review the prospects of detecting SMBH binaries through electromagnetic radiative processes thought to be associated with galaxy mergers and late-stage binary evolution. We then discuss the scientific goals of joint pulsar timing and electromagnetic studies of these systems, including …
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are products of galaxy mergers, and are important in testing Lambda cold dark matter cosmology and locating gravitational-wave-radiation sources. A unique electromagnetic signature of SMBHBs in galactic nuclei is essential in identifying the binaries in observations from the IR band through optical to X-ray. Recently, the flares in optical, UV, and X-ray caused by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) tidally disrupting nearby stars have been successfully used to observationally probe single SMBHs in normal galaxies. In this Letter, we investigate the accre…
The coalescence history of massive black holes has been derived from cosmological simulations, in which the evolution of those objects and that of the host galaxies are followed in a consistent way. The present study indicates that supermassive black holes having masses greater than $\sim 10^{9} M_{\odot}$ underwent up to 500 merger events along their history. The derived coalescence rate per comoving volume and per mass interval permitted to obtain an estimate of the expected detection rate distribution of gravitational wave signals ("ring-down") along frequencies accessible by the planned in…
Sensitivity of Weak Lensing Surveys to Gravitational Waves from Inspiraling Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
University of Southern California（南加州大学）；Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院喷气推进实验室）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are presently the only means to search for the gravitational wave stochastic background from supermassive black hole binary populations, considered to be within the grasp of current or near future observations. However, the stringent upperlimit set by the Parkes PTA (Shannon et al. 2013, 2015) has been interpreted as excluding at $> 90\%$ confidence the current paradigm of binary assembly through galaxy mergers and hardening via stellar interactions, suggesting evolution is accelerated (by stars and/or gas) or stalled. Using Bayesian hierarchical modelling, we consi…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHs) are expected to result from galaxy mergers, and thus are natural byproducts (and probes) of hierarchical structure formation in the Universe. They are also the primary expected source of low-frequency gravitational wave emission. We search for binary BHs using time-variable velocity shifts in broad Mg II emission lines of quasars with multi-epoch observations. First, we inspect velocity shifts of the binary SMBH candidates identified in Ju et al. (2013), using SDSS spectra with an additional epoch of data that lengthens the typical baseline to ~10 yr. W…
I discuss the possibility that accreting supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries with sub-parsec separations produce periodically recurring luminous outbursts that interrupt periods of relative quiescence. This hypothesis is motivated by two characteristics found generically in simulations of binaries embedded in prograde accretion discs: (i) the formation of a central, low-density cavity around the binary, and (ii) the leakage of gas into this cavity, occurring once per orbit via discrete streams on nearly radial trajectories. The first feature would reduce the emergent optical/UV flux of the…
Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves (GWs) is a powerful probe of the matter distribution in the universe. Here we revisit the wave-optics effects induced by dark matter (DM) halos on the GW signals of merging massive black hole binaries (MBHBs), and we study the possibility of discerning these effects using the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). In particular, we include the halos in the low-mass range of $\rm 10^5-10^8\, M_\odot$ since they are the most numerous according to the cold DM model. We simulate the lensed signals corresponding to a wide range of impact parameters, …
We present two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the tidal interaction between a supermassive black hole binary with moderate mass ratio, and the fossil gas disc where it is embedded. Our study extends previous one-dimensional height-integrated disc models, which predicted that the density of the gas disc between the primary and the secondary black holes should rise significantly during the ultimate stages of the binary's hardening driven by the gravitational radiation torque. This snow-plough mechanism, as we call it, would lead to an increase in the bolometric luminosity of the syste…
We used a model of a relativistic accretion disk around a supermassive black hole (SMBH), based on ray-tracing method in the Kerr metric, to study the variations of the composite Fe K$α$ line emitted from two accretion disks around SMBHs in a binary system. We assumed that the orbit of such a binary is approximately Keplerian, and simulated the composite line shapes for different orbital elements, accretion disk parameters and mass ratios of the components. The obtained results show that, if observed in the spectra of some SMBH binaries during their different orbital phases, such composite Fe …
Coincident detections of electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational wave (GW) signatures from coalescence events of supermassive black holes are the next observational grand challenge. Such detections will provide the means to study cosmological evolution and accretion processes associated with these gargantuan compact objects. More generally, the observations will enable testing general relativity in the strong, nonlinear regime and will provide independent cosmological measurements to high precision. Understanding the conditions under which coincidences of EM and GW signatures arise during super…
This paper presents a technique to search for supermassive black hole binaries (MBHBs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The search is based on the peculiar properties of merging galaxies that are found in a mock galaxy catalog from the Millennium Simulation. MBHBs are expected to be the main gravitational wave (GW) sources for pulsar timing arrays (PTAs); however, it is still unclear if the observed GW signal will be produced by a few single MBHBs, or if it will have the properties of a stochastic background. The goal of this work is to produce a map of the sky in which each galaxy is a…
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are expected to detect gravitational waves (GWs) from individual low-redshift (z<1.5) compact supermassive (M>10^9 Msun) black hole (SMBH) binaries with orbital periods of approx. 0.1 - 10 yrs. Identifying the electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of these sources would provide confirmation of putative direct detections of GWs, present a rare opportunity to study the environments of compact SMBH binaries, and could enable the use of these sources as standard sirens for cosmology. Here we consider the feasibility of such an EM identification. We show that because the hos…
Stellar Stripping and Disruption in Disks around Supermassive Black Hole Binaries: Repeating nuclear transients prior to LISA events
Space Telescope Science Institute（太空望远镜科学研究所）；Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；Niels Bohr International Academy, Niels Bohr Institute（尼尔斯·玻尔国际学院，尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；Chungbuk National University（忠北国立大学）；Aoyama Gakuin University（青山学院大学）；University of Zurich（苏黎世大学）
The properties of the first continuous gravitational waves: Optimizing pulsar timing observations for supermassive black hole binary detection
School of Physics, The University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学物理学院）；OzGrav: The ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery（引力波发现ARC卓越中心）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University（蒙纳士大学物理与天文学院）
The background gas humming and multi-messenger transients of stalled supermassive black hole binaries
Universitat Politècnica de València（巴伦西亚理工大学）；Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics（马克斯·普朗克地外物理研究所）；Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Galileo Galilei”, Univ. di Padova（帕多瓦大学伽利略·伽利莱物理与天文学系）；Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute（费森可夫天文物理研究所）
An Accurate Modeling of Nano-hertz Gravitational Wave Signal from Eccentric Supermassive Binary Black Holes: An Essential Step Toward a Robust Discovery
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) found in the centers of many galaxies have been recognized to play a fundamental active role in the cosmological structure formation process. In hierarchical formation scenarios, SMBHs are expected to form binaries following the merger of their host galaxies. If these binaries do not coalesce before the merger with a third galaxy, the formation of a black hole triple system is possible. Numerical simulations of the dynamics of triples within galaxy cores exhibit phases of very high eccentricity (as high as $e \sim 0.99$). During these phases, intense bursts of …
We study the interaction of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary and a standard radiatively efficient thin accretion disk. We examine steady-state configurations of the disk and migrating SMBH system, self-consistently accounting for tidal and viscous torques and heating, radiative diffusion limited cooling, gas and radiation pressure, and the decay of the binary's orbit. We obtain a "phase diagram" of the system as a function of binary parameters, showing regimes in which both the disk structure and migration have a different character. Although massive binaries can create a central gap in…
Effects of dark dipole radiation on eccentric supermassive black hole binary inspirals
School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS)（中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院）；School of Physics, Nanjing University（南京大学物理学院）
