Lorenzo Bertassi
Lunedì, 13 ottobre·13:30 - 14:00
U2-2016
Finding and confirming Massive Black Hole pairs and binaries in EM time domain surveys
Massive black hole binaries are a natural outcome of galaxy mergers, and are expected to be among the loudest gravitational wave sources to be observed by pulsar timing arrays and space-borne interferometers. The detection of such sources through electromagnetic emission is crucial to constrain the dynamical evolution of the two MBHs and the expected merger rates. In this talk I will first review the EM signatures proposed so far. I will then introduce a statistically robust method to identify MBHB candidates at sub-parsec scales via detection of periodicities with arbitrary shapes, and describe a new signature based on the analysis of intrinsically variable AGN light curves that can reveal unresolved MBH pairs at separation ≲ kiloparsec. Finally, I will present a potentially unique spectroscopic signature that could confirm photometric sub-milli-parsec binary candidates found in time-domain surveys .