We report the serendipitous multiwavelength discovery of a candidate dual black hole system with a separation of ~100 pc, in the gas-rich luminous infrared galaxy MCG-03-34-64 (z=0.016). Hubble Space Telescope/ACS observations show three distinct optical centroids in the [O III] narrow-band and F814W images. Subsequent analysis of Chandra/ACIS data shows two spatially-resolved peaks of equal intensity in the neutral Fe Ka (6.2-6.6 keV) band, while high-resolution radio continuum observations with the Very Large Array at 8.46 GHz (3.6 cm band) show two spatially-coincident radio peaks. Fast shocks as the ionizing source seem unlikely, given the energies required for production of Fe Ka. If confirmed, the separation of ~100 pc would represent the closest dual AGN reported to date with spatially-resolved, multiwavelength observations.
@article{arxiv.2403.07717,
title = {Resolving Dual Active Galactic Nuclei with ~100 pc separation in MCG-03-34-64},
author = {Anna Trindade Falcao and T. J. Turner and S. B. Kraemer and V. Braito and J. Reeves and H. R. Schmitt and L. Feuillet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.07717},
year = {2024}
}