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Bringing the Visible Universe into Focus with Robo-AO
Published on: February 12, 2013
Progenitor of the Recoiling Supermassive Black Hole RBH-1 Identified Using HST and JWST Imaging
Tousif Islam1, Tejaswi Venumadhav2,3, Digvijay Wadekar4,5
1Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Kohn Hall, Lagoon Road, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
None:
Using a combination of Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope imaging, a runaway supermassive black hole was recently identified with an inferred velocity of 954_{-126}^{+110} km s^{-1}, likely ejected from a compact star-forming galaxy at z≈0.96. Assuming the runaway black hole originated from a gravitational-wave-driven merger of two supermassive black holes (SMBHs), we combine its measured recoil velocity with gravitational-wave recoil predictions from numerical relativity and black-hole perturbation theory to constrain the mass ratio and spin configuration of the progenitor binary that overcame the final-parsec problem and merged ∼70 Myr ago. We find that the progenitor binary must have been precessing, with a mass ratio m_{1}/m_{2}≲6, and that the more massive SMBH likely possessed a high dimensionless spin magnitude (∼0.75) in order to generate a recoil of this magnitude. Such SMBH mergers could represent an interesting source population for the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission, with characteristic signal-to-noise ratios of order ≳10^{3}. Furthermore, the inferred progenitor SMBH properties suggest that the compact galaxy likely originated from a major, gas-rich ("wet") merger between two galaxies of comparable mass, with a mass ratio ≲4.
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