Super-massive binary black holes and emission lines in active galactic nuclei

TL;DR

This paper reviews how supermassive binary black holes influence emission lines in active galactic nuclei, discusses observational challenges, and explores potential signatures for SMB detection.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of emission line profiles related to SMBs, highlighting complexities and proposing combined observational methods for SMB identification.

Findings

Broad line profiles can be caused by complex BLR structures, not just SMBs.

Double-peaked narrow lines often result from NLR geometry or mergers.

Fe Kα line profiles may indicate accretion disks around SMBs.

Abstract

The broad emission spectral lines emitted from AGNs are our main probe of the geometry and physics of the broad line region (BLR) close to the SMBH. There is a group of AGNs that emits very broad and complex line profiles, showing two displaced peaks, one blueshifted and one redshifted from the systemic velocity defined by the narrow lines, or a single such peak. It has been proposed that such line shapes could indicate a supermassive binary black hole (SMB) system. We discuss here how the presence of an SMB will affect the BLRs of AGNs and what the observational consequences might be. We review previous claims of SMBs based on broad line profiles and find that they may have non-SMB explanations as a consequence of a complex BLR structure. Because of these effects it is very hard to put limits on the number of SMBs from broad line profiles. It is still possible, however, that unusual broad line profiles in combination with other observational effects (line ratios, quasi-periodical oscillations, spectropolarimetry, etc.) could be used for SMBs detection. Some narrow lines (e.g., [O\,III]) in some AGNs show a double-peaked profile. Such profiles can be caused by streams in the Narrow Line Region (NLR), but may also indicate the presence of a kilo-parsec scale mergers. A few objects indicated as double-peaked narrow line emitters are confirmed as kpc-scale margers, but double-peaked narrow line profiles are mostly caused by the complex NLR geometry. We briefly discuss the expected line profile of broad Fe K$\alpha$ that probably originated in the accretion disk(s) around SMBs. Finally we consider rare configurations where a SMB system might be gravitationally lensed by a foreground galaxy, and discuss the expected line profiles in these systems.