Did ASAS-SN Kill the Supermassive Black Hole Binary Candidate PG1302-102?

TL;DR

This paper re-analyzes the quasar PG1302-102 using extended ASAS-SN data and finds that the evidence for its supermassive black hole binary candidate weakens, challenging previous claims of periodicity.

Contribution

It introduces a re-analysis with an extended dataset and a maximum likelihood method, showing that the periodicity evidence diminishes with more data.

Findings

Evidence for periodicity decreases with new data

Extended baseline weakens the binary hypothesis

Original periodicity claim is likely not robust

Abstract

Graham et al. (2015a) reported a periodically varying quasar and supermassive black hole binary candidate, PG1302-102 (hereafter PG1302), which was discovered in the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS). Its combined Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) and CRTS optical light curve is well fitted to a sinusoid of an observed period of $\approx 1,884$ days and well modeled by the relativistic Doppler boosting of the secondary mini-disk (D'Orazio et al. 2015). However, the LINEAR+CRTS light curve from MJD $\approx 52700$ to MJD $\approx 56400$ covers only $\sim 2$ cycles of periodic variation, which is a short baseline that can be highly susceptible to normal, stochastic quasar variability (Vaughan et al. 2016). In this Letter, we present a re-analysis of PG1302, using the latest light curve from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), which extends the observational baseline to the present day (MJD $\approx 58200$), and adopting a maximum likelihood method which searches for a periodic component in addition to stochastic quasar variability. When the ASAS-SN data are combined with the previous LINEAR+CRTS data, the evidence for periodicity decreases. For genuine periodicity one would expect that additional data would strengthen the evidence, so the decrease in significance may be an indication that the binary model is disfavored.