Dual Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxy Merger Remnants in DEEP2

Details Dual Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxy Merger Remnants in DEEP2 Dual Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxy Merger Remnants in DEEP2

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5201c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #52.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.819

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

One of the predictions of the hierarchical paradigm for structure formation is that some galaxies should exhibit two supermassive black holes in their centers as the result of a recent merger. Each black hole may be either quiescent or a powering a luminous AGN. Inspired by the serendipitous discovery of a dual AGN in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey, we conduct a systematic search of the data for further dual AGN and expand the search to include galaxies hosting an
AGN in orbit about a quiescent supermassive black hole. While theoretically predicted, such phenomena are difficult to observe and adequate observations have only recently become possible with the advent of sufficiently deep spectroscopic surveys. AGN activity is manifest in broad [O III] emission lines, and we fit emission line templates to the [O III] lines and compare to absorption line template fits to the stellar component. Offsets between the [O III] line and
the stellar component suggest a luminous AGN in orbit around a quiescent companion supermassive black hole. We identify such objects in the DEEP2 catalog and use them to place a lower limit on the merger rate of galaxies in the universe.
This work is supported by NSF grant AST-0507428.

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