Program: GN-2011B-Q-96

Title:Searching for Compton-Thick Dual AGN In Extremely Close Mergers
PI:Michael Koss
Co-I(s): Richard Mushotzky, Sylvain Veilleux, Margaret Trippe, Ezequiel Treister, Neil Gehrels

Abstract

Since the discovery 10 years ago that almost all massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, one of the great mysteries has been why some supermassive black holes emit tremendous amount of energy and others appear to be inactive. While there are many theoretical studies, the best proposed mechanism has been that mergers send gas into the central regions to ignite the AGN. If mergers trigger AGN, theoretical studies suggest that multiple AGN can be activated in a single merger. However, detections of dual AGN are rare with only a few recent discoveries like NGC 6240. We propose optical spectroscopy of a sample of 7 local AGN in extremely close mergers ($<3\arcsec$ or $<$1 kpc) to search for dual AGN. These galaxies have been surveyed for dual AGN with Chandra, but merging galaxies are sometimes obscured by large amounts of circumnuclear gas and dust making them invisible to X-rays. {\bf This data will allow us to investigate obscured black hole growth and determine the incidence of multiple accreting nuclei in the low redshift Universe for the first time.}

Publications using this program's data