Self-consistent thermal regulation in circumbinary disks permits long-lived non-accretion phases that suppress binary feeding rates toward the Eddington limit while leaving optical/near-IR detectability intact.
A Population of Short-Period Variable Quasars from PTF as Supermassive Black Hole Binary Candidates
3 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) at sub-parsec separations should be common in galactic nuclei, as a result of frequent galaxy mergers. Hydrodynamical simulations of circumbinary discs predict strong periodic modulation of the mass accretion rate on time-scales comparable to the orbital period of the binary. As a result, SMBHBs may be recognized by the periodic modulation of their brightness. We conducted a statistical search for periodic variability in a sample of 35,383 spectroscopically confirmed quasars in the photometric database of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). We analysed Lomb-Scargle periodograms and assessed the significance of our findings by modeling each individual quasar's variability as a damped random walk (DRW). We identified 50 quasars with significant periodicity beyond the DRW model, typically with short periods of a few hundred days. We find 33 of these to remain significant after a re-analysis of their periodograms including additional optical data from the intermediate-PTF and the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS). Assuming that the observed periods correspond to the redshifted orbital periods of SMBHBs, we conclude that our findings are consistent with a population of unequal-mass SMBHBs, with a typical mass ratio as low as q = M2/M1 ~ 0.01.
verdicts
UNVERDICTED 3representative citing papers
Coherent map-making with pulsar distances in PTAs reaches diffraction-limited angular resolution of ~2 arcmin for GW sources at SNR=10 using roughly 9 pulsars.
A review outlining radio methods for dual AGN and SMBHB detection and the role of SKAO in enabling comprehensive studies across cosmic time.
citing papers explorer
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Dynamics and detectability of long-lived non-accretion phases for massive black hole binaries in cold, thermally regulating disks
Self-consistent thermal regulation in circumbinary disks permits long-lived non-accretion phases that suppress binary feeding rates toward the Eddington limit while leaving optical/near-IR detectability intact.
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Reaching diffraction-limited localization with coherent PTAs
Coherent map-making with pulsar distances in PTAs reaches diffraction-limited angular resolution of ~2 arcmin for GW sources at SNR=10 using roughly 9 pulsars.
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Dual AGN and Multiple SMBH Systems in the Era of SKAO
A review outlining radio methods for dual AGN and SMBHB detection and the role of SKAO in enabling comprehensive studies across cosmic time.