Variations of Broad Emission Lines from periodicity QSOs under the interpretation of supermassive binary black holes with misaligned circumbinary broad line regions

TL;DR

This study investigates how broad emission line profiles in quasars with periodic light curves vary when the circumbinary broad line region is misaligned with the supermassive binary black hole orbital plane, considering different variation mechanisms.

Contribution

It extends previous models by analyzing BEL profile variations with misaligned BLRs under both Doppler boosting and intrinsic variation scenarios, revealing distinct profile behaviors and dependencies on offset angles.

Findings

Lorentz-like BEL profiles emerge at high offset angles in the BBH-DB model.

Profile variation amplitudes decrease with offset angle in BBH-DB scenario.

Bi-BLR features are more prominent in the BBH-IntDB model with larger mass ratios.

Abstract

Quasars with periodic light curves are considered as candidates of supermassive binary black hole (BBH) systems. One way for further confirmations may be searching for other characteristic signatures, such as those in their broad emission lines (BELs), if any, which require a thorough understanding on the response of BELs to the BBH systems. In Ji et al. (2021), we have investigated the response of circumbinary broad line region (BLR) to the central active secondary black hole under the relativistic Doppler boosting (BBH-DB) and intrinsic variation (BBH-IntDB) dominant mechanisms for continuum variation by assuming the middle plane of the BLR aligned with the BBH orbital plane. In this paper, we explore how the BEL profiles vary when the BLR is misaligned from the BBH orbital plane with different offset angles under both the BBH-DB and BBH-IntDB scenarios. Given a fixed inclination angle of the BBH orbital plane viewed in edge-on and similar continuum light curves produced by the two scenarios, increasing offset angles make the initial opening angle of the circumbinary BLR enlarged due to orbital precession caused by the BBH system, especially for clouds in the inner region, which result in Lorentz-like BEL profiles for the BBH-DB model but still Gaussian-like profiles for the BBH-IntDB model at the vertical BLR case. The amplitude of profile variations decrease with increasing offset angles for the BBH-DB scenario, while keep nearly constant for the BBH-IntDB scenario, since the Doppler boosting effect is motion direction preferred but the intrinsic variation is radiated isotropically. If the circumbinary BLR is composed of a coplanar and a vertical components with their number of clouds following the mass ratio of the BBHs, then the bi-BLR features are more significant for the BBH-IntDB model that require larger mass ratio to generate similar continuum variation than the BBH-DB model.