Chengcheng Xin
Description
Finding Merging SMBHs with Time-Domain Surveys
Inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), expected products of galaxy mergers and strong low-frequency gravitational-wave sources, are difficult to resolve at sub-parsec scales. Their orbits may instead be traced through periodic or chirping AGN variability, including relativistic Doppler boosting. I will present optical-survey methods combining accretion-flow models and Bayesian chirp detection. My results suggest that mixtures of mini-disk and circumbinary-disk emission are present in observations by Rubin’s LSST. In PTF, a Bayesian chirp-plus-noise search finds 33 apparent multi-cycle fits among 35,383 quasars, but none remains phase-coherent with extended ASAS-SN and ZTF data. Ten-year LSST simulations recover chirps across broad merger-time and amplitude ranges under the assumed binary and noise models. However, mini-disks may be more visible in UV/X-rays for many systems considered, motivating broad, deep surveys to probe more binary parameter space.
When
Monday, November 9, 2026 11:00 AM
Where
Inperson
G10
Virtual
Zoom
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