Cosmic Duets I. High-spatial resolution spectroscopy of dual and lensed AGN with MUSE-NFM

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution MUSE spectroscopy to identify and analyze dual and lensed AGN systems at redshifts 0.5-3.5, revealing new properties relevant to galaxy evolution and black hole mergers.

Contribution

First-year results demonstrating the effectiveness of Gaia multipeak selection combined with MUSE spectroscopy for detecting sub-arcsecond dual and lensed AGN.

Findings

Confirmed 19 AGN multiplets, including 6 dual AGN and 10 lensed quasars.

Identified that bright systems are mostly lensed quasars, while fainter ones are more likely dual AGN.

Sample accounts for 22% of known dual AGN with projected separations below 7 kpc at these redshifts.

Abstract

We present the first-year results of the MUSE Large Program "Cosmic Duets", whose goal is to obtain adaptive-optics assisted MUSE observations with an angular resolution of 0.1"-0.2" in order to provide integral-field spectroscopy of sub-arcsec separation dual and lensed active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidates. These observations reveal previously unexplored properties of dual and lensed systems that are key to understanding galaxy evolution, supermassive black hole mergers, and strong-lensing modeling. Targets were efficiently selected using the Gaia multipeak (GMP) technique, which identifies pairs of point-like sources with separations below 0.8" in the Gaia catalog. MUSE spatially resolved spectroscopy provides accurate redshifts, ionization diagnostics, and identification of absorption systems along the line of sight. We report results for 30 GMP targets at z=0.5-3.5. All systems show at least 2 spatially resolved components. 19 objects are confirmed as AGN multiplets, including 6 dual AGN, 10 doubly lensed quasars, and 3 quadruply lensed systems, while the remaining 11 correspond to chance alignments with foreground stars. Among all the spectroscopically confirmed dual AGN in the literature, 27 pairs have projected separations below 7kpc in this redshift regime, and our sample accounts for 22% of the total. We studied dual and lensed AGN distributions as a function of redshift, magnitude, and projected separation while accounting for selection effects, and we find that bright systems are dominated by lensed quasars, whereas the relative fraction of dual AGN increases at fainter magnitudes. This first-year sample demonstrates the high efficiency of GMP selection combined with MUSE spectroscopy for identifying sub-arcsec dual and lensed AGN. The full program, targeting 150 systems, will enable statistical studies of dual AGN and constraints on mass distribution in lensing galaxies.