Gravitational wave (GW) and gravitational slingshot recoil kicks, which are natural products of SMBH evolution in merging galaxies, can produce active galactic "nuclei" that are offset from the centers of their host galaxies. Detections of offset AGN would provide key constraints on SMBH binary mass and spin evolution and on GW event rates. Although numerous offset AGN candidates have been identified, none have been definitively confirmed. Multi-wavelength observations with next-generation telescopes, including systematic large-area surveys, will provide unprecedented opportunities to identify and confirm candidate offset AGN from sub-parsec to kiloparsec scales. We highlight ways in which these observations will open a new avenue for multi-messenger studies in the dawn of low-frequency (~ nHz - mHz) GW astronomy.
@article{arxiv.1903.09301,
title = {Detecting Offset Active Galactic Nuclei},
author = {Laura Blecha and Walter Brisken and Sarah Burke-Spolaor and Francesca Civano and Julia Comerford and Jeremy Darling and T. Joseph W. Lazio and Thomas J. Maccarone},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.09301},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Science White Paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1810.06609