A Dual Active Black Hole Candidate with Mass Ratio ~7:1 in a Disk Galaxy

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a dual active galactic nucleus system in a disk galaxy with a significant mass ratio, providing rare observational evidence of minor merger-induced dual AGNs.

Contribution

It presents the first robust estimate of black hole masses in a dual AGN system with a high mass ratio in an undisturbed galaxy, highlighting a rare minor merger scenario.

Findings

Identified a dual AGN with a 7:1 mass ratio in a disk galaxy.

Estimated black hole masses of 9.4 million and 1.3 million solar masses.

Ruled out alternative explanations like gas kinematics and dust effects.

Abstract

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.