Kavli Affiliate: Luis C. Ho
| First 5 Authors: Xiao Cao, Yan-Mei Chen, Yong Shi, Junfeng Wang, Zhi-Jie Zhou
| Summary:
Dual active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with comparable masses are commonly
witnessed among the major merged galaxies with interaction remnants.
Considering almost every massive galaxy is associated with multiple dwarf
satellites around it, minor mergers involving galaxies with disproportional
stellar masses should be much more common than major mergers, which would
naturally lead to black hole (BH) pairs with significantly different masses.
However, dual AGNs generated by minor mergers involving one or two dwarf
galaxies are exceptionally rare and understudied. Moreover, good estimates of
the masses of both BHs are not yet available to test this idea. Here we report
the evidence of a dual AGN candidate with mass ratio $sim$7:1 located in an
undisturbed disk galaxy. We identify the central BH with mass of $9.4 times
10^6M_odot$ from its radio emission as well as AGN-driven galactic-scale
biconical outflows. The off-centered BH generates obvious broad and narrow
emission-line regions, which gives us a robust estimation of a $1.3 times
10^6M_odot$ BH mass. We explore alternative scenarios for explaining the
observational features of this system, including the complex gas kinematics
triggered by central AGN activity and dust attenuation of the broad-line region
of the central BH, finding that they failed to fully account for the kinematics
of both the redshifted off-centered broad and narrow emission-line components.
| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”Luis C. Ho”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=3