Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Recoiling Supermassive Black Holes: A Search In The Nearby Universe, Davide Lena, Andrew Edward Robinson, Alessandro Marconi, David J. Axon, Alessandro Capetti, David Merritt, Daniel P. Batcheldor

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

The coalescence of a binary black hole can be accompanied by a large gravitational recoil due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves. A recoiling supermassive black hole (SBH) can subsequently undergo long-lived oscillations in the potential well of its host galaxy, suggesting that offset SBHs may be common in the cores of massive ellipticals. We have analyzed Hubble Space Telescope archival images of 14 nearby core ellipticals, finding evidence for small (≲ 10 pc) displacements between the active galactic nucleus (AGN; the location of the SBH) and the center of the galaxy (the mean photocenter) in 10 of them. Excluding …