Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21944203i&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #442.03
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Recent observational results show possible evidence that Binary Black Holes (BBHs) exist in the center of giant galaxies and may merge to form a supermassive black hole in the process of their evolution. Clarifying the BBH formation mechanism will have an enormous impact on the study of the galaxy merger in galaxy formation process, as well as the study of the black hole merger in supermassive black hole formation process and the detection of gravitational waves at the BBH orbital decay phase. We first detected a periodic flux variation on a cycle of 93×1 days from the 3-mm monitoring observations of a giant elliptical galaxy 3C 66B, with which an orbital motion with a period of 1.05±0.03 years had been observed. The detected signal period is shorter than the orbital period; however it can be explained by the Doppler-shifted modulation associated with the orbital motion of a BBH. Assuming that the BBH has a circular orbit and that the jet axis is parallel to the binary angular momentum, our observational results demonstrate the presence of a very close BBH that has a binary orbit with an orbital period of 1.05±0.03 years, an orbital radius of (3.9±1.0)×10-3 pc, an orbital separation of (6.1+1.0-0.9)×10-3 pc, the larger black hole mass of (1.2+0.5-0.2)×109 M&sun;, and the smaller black hole mass of (7.0+4.7-6.4)×108 M&sun;. Since it is supposed that a black hole emits strong gravitational waves in the final stage of merger, the decay time of a BBH estimated from the gravitational radiation is (5.1+60.5-2.5)×102 years. Our observational results show that the black hole collisions may have important implications for the formation of a supermassive black hole in the evolution process.
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