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Related papers: A systematic search for massive black hole binarie…

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The growing number of binary black hole mergers detected through gravitational waves offers unprecedented insight into their underlying population, yet their astrophysical formation channels remain unresolved. We present a new method to…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-10-23 William J. Smith , Krystal Ruiz-Rocha , Kelly Holley-Bockelmann , Michela Mapelli , Karan Jani

We report the discovery of SDSS J0849+1114 as the first known triple Type 2 Seyfert nucleus. It represents three active black holes that are identified from new spatially resolved optical slit spectroscopy using the Dual Imaging…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-12-17 Xin Liu , Meicun Hou , Zhiyuan Li , Kristina Nyland , Hengxiao Guo , Minzhi Kong , Yue Shen , Joan M. Wrobel , Sijia Peng

During the final stages of a galaxy merger, dynamical friction acting on the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the post-merger remnant can lead to the formation of a gravitationally bound binary SMBH. In the event that at least one of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-25 Peter Breiding , Michael Eracleous , Tamara Bogdanović , Sarah Burke-Spolaor , T. Joseph W. Lazio

Binary supermassive black holes (BSBHs) are expected to be a generic byproduct from hierarchical galaxy formation. The final coalescence of BSBHs is thought to be the loudest gravitational wave (GW) siren, yet no confirmed BSBH is known in…

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, found direct evidence for double black hole binaries emitting gravitational waves. Galactic nuclei are expected to harbor the densest population of stellar-mass black holes. A…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-02-01 Imre Bartos , Bence Kocsis , Zoltán Haiman , Szabolcs Márka

This paper presents techniques and results for simulations of unequal mass, non-spinning black hole binaries with pseudo-spectral methods. Specifically, we develop an efficient root-finding procedure to ensure the black hole initial data…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2013-05-30 Luisa T. Buchman , Harald P. Pfeiffer , Mark A. Scheel , Bela Szilagyi

Supermassive black holes are commonly found in the center of galaxies and evolve with their hosts. The supermassive binary black holes (SMBBH) are thus expected to exist in close galaxy pairs, however, none has been unequivocally detected.…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2020-07-15 Yi Feng , Di Li , Zheng Zheng , Chao-Wei Tsai

Supermassive black hole binary systems (SMBHBs) should be the most powerful sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the Universe. Once Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) detect the stochastic GW background from their cosmic merger history,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-06-26 Nicole M. Khusid , Chiara M. F. Mingarelli , Priyamvada Natarajan , J. Andrew Casey-Clyde , Anna Barnacka

A spectroscopic support survey of 103 objects observed by the MOST satellite is presented; 96 are variable stars with 83 of them being new MOST variable-star detections or stars with variability types verified and/or modified on the basis…

The 100,000 spectra from the 2 degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) in the 100k Public Data Release represent the largest single compilation of galaxy spectra available. By virtue of its sheer size and the properties of the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Darren S. Madgwick , Paul C. Hewett , Daniel J. Mortlock , Ofer Lahav

Coalescing massive Black Hole binaries are the strongest and probably the most important gravitational wave sources in the LISA band. The spin and orbital precessions bring complexity in the waveform and make the likelihood surface richer…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2010-05-25 Antoine Petiteau , Yu Shang , Stanislav Babak , Farhan Feroz

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitously found at the centers of most massive galaxies. Measuring SMBH mass is important for understanding the origin and evolution of SMBHs. However, traditional methods require spectroscopic data…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-04-23 Joshua Yao-Yu Lin , Sneh Pandya , Devanshi Pratap , Xin Liu , Matias Carrasco Kind , Volodymyr Kindratenko

We present a population-scale catalogue of 287,872 supermassive black hole masses with high accuracy. Using a deep encoder-decoder network trained on optical spectra with reverberation-mapping (RM) based labels of 849 quasars and applied to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-12-05 Yuhao Lu , HengJian SiTu , Jie Li , Yixuan Li , Yang Liu , Wenbin Lin , Yu Wang

Recently we discovered an unprecedented supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) candidate in the nearby Seyfert galaxy SDSS J1430+2303, which is predicted to merge within three years. X-ray spectroscopy may bring unique kinematic evidence…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-09-14 Liming Dou , Ning Jiang , Tinggui Wang , Xinwen Shu , Huan Yang , Zhen Pan , Jiazheng Zhu , Tao An , Zhen-Ya Zheng , Yanli Ai

We present a spectroscopic follow-up program targeting closely-separated dual quasar candidates selected from imaging of SDSS quasars with the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). Using two-dimensional image…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-04-08 Shenli Tang , John Silverman , Xavier Prochaska , Manda Banerji , Xuheng Ding , Masafusa Onoue , Knud Jahnke

In this manuscript, variations in optical spectral index $\alpha_{5100}$ are applied for detecting central sub-parsec binary black hole systems (sub-pc BBHs) in broad line active galactic nuclei (BLAGN), due to apparent effects of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-11-13 Zhang XueGuang

Using the black hole merger rate inferred from LIGO, we calculate the abundance of tightly bound binary black holes in the Milky Way galaxy. Binaries with a small semimajor axis ($\lesssim 10 R_\odot$) originate at larger separations…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-05-31 Pierre Christian , Abraham Loeb

Supermassive black hole binaries are the most promising source of gravitational-waves in the frequency band accessible to pulsar timing arrays. Most of these binaries will be too distant to detect individually, but together they will form…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2020-06-19 Bence Bécsy , Neil J. Cornish

We perform Bayesian targeted searches for continuous gravitational waves from eccentric supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) using the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array third data release (PPTA DR3). Six electromagnetically motivated sky…