Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

A Recoiling Supermassive Black Hole in the Quasar SDSS J092712.65+294344.0?

FREE ISSUE

S. Komossa1, H. Zhou1 and H. Lu1

Show affiliations


We present SDSS J092712.65+294344.0 as the best candidate to date for a recoiling supermassive black hole (SMBH). SDSS J0927+2943 shows an exceptional optical emission-line spectrum with two sets of emission lines: one set of very narrow emission lines, and a second set of broad Balmer and broad high-ionization forbidden lines which are blueshifted by 2650 km s−1 relative to the set of narrow emission lines. This observation is most naturally explained if the SMBH was ejected from the core of the galaxy, carrying with it the broad-line gas while leaving behind the bulk of the narrow-line gas. We show that the observed properties of SDSS J0927+2943 are consistent with predictions and expectations from recent numerical relativity simulations which demonstrate that SMBHs can receive kicks up to several thousand km s−1 due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves during the coalescence of a binary. Our detection of a strong candidate for a rapidly recoiling SMBH implies that kicks large enough to remove SMBHs completely from their host galaxies do occur, with important implications for models of black hole and galaxy assembly at the epoch of structure formation, and for recoil models.

Subject headings

galaxies: active; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: individual (SDSS J092712.65+294344.0); quasars: emission lines


Dates

Issue 2 (2008 May 10)

Received 2008 February 21, accepted for publication 2008 March 31

Published 2008 April 14



  1. A Recoiling Supermassive Black Hole in the Quasar SDSS J092712.65+294344.0?

    S. Komossa et al 2008 ApJ 678 L81

  2. Antiferromagnetic ordering in the three-state Potts model

    M Schick and R B Griffiths 1977 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 10 2123

  3. Semiclassical many-mode Floquet theory. II. Non-linear multiphoton dynamics of a two-level system in a strong bichromatic field

    Tak-San Ho and Shih-I Chu 1984 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Phys. 17 2101

  4. Results from the first burst hardware injections performed on GEO 600

    R Balasubramanian et al 2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 3015

  5. Feedforward correction of mirror misalignment fluctuations for the GEO 600 gravitational wave detector

    J R Smith et al 2005 Class. Quantum Grav. 22 3093

  6. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian for the Bondi–Sachs metrics

    J Korbicz and J Tafel 2004 Class. Quantum Grav. 21 3301

  7. The Evolution of Galaxies in X-Ray-luminous Groups

    Tesla E. Jeltema et al. 2007 ApJ 658 865

  8. Development of a tritium fuel processing system using an electrolytic reactor for ITER

    T. Yamanishi et al 2000 Nucl. Fusion 40 515

  9. Classical Cepheid Pulsation Models. X. The Period-Age Relation

    G. Bono et al. 2005 ApJ 621 966

  10. Black-hole entropy in loop quantum gravity

    Krzysztof A Meissner 2004 Class. Quantum Grav. 21 5245

Users also read

What's this?
This innovative new feature generates a list of articles 'also read' by other users based on them reading the original article. Article abstracts citations and references are all considered and weighted accordingly. We hope that this will help you find relevant papers for your research.

  1. Gravitational Wave Recoil Oscillations of Black Holes: Implications for Unified Models of Active Galactic Nuclei
  2. On the Nature of Seyfert Galaxies with High [O III] λ5007 Blueshifts
  3. Discovery of a Binary Active Galactic Nucleus in the Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxy NGC 6240 Using Chandra
More

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.