Quasars with a Kick -- Black Hole Recoil in Quasars
Astrophysics
2007-07-25 v1
Abstract
Mergers of spinning black holes can give recoil velocities from gravitational radiation up to several thousand km/s. A recoiling supermassive black hole in an AGN can retain the inner part of its accretion disk, providing fuel for continuing AGN activity. Using AGN in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) that show velocity shifts of the broad emission lines relative to the narrow lines, we place upper limits on the incidence of high velocity recoils in AGN. Brief but powerful flares in soft X-rays may occur when bound material falls back into the moving accretion disk.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0707.3625,
title = {Quasars with a Kick -- Black Hole Recoil in Quasars},
author = {G. A. Shields and E. W. Bonning and S. Salviander},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0707.3625},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
5 pages, to appear in "Black Holes. Poster Papers from the Space Telescope Science Institute Symposium, April 2007," Mario Livio and Anton Koekemoer, eds., STScI