Discovery of a quasar with double-peaked broad balmer emission lines

Abstract

ABSTRACT Most massive galaxies contain a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at their centre. When galaxies merge, their SMBHs sink to the centre of the new galaxy, where they are thought to eventually merge. During this process, an SMBH binary is formed. The presence of two sets of broad emission lines in the optical spectrum of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) has been interpreted as evidence for two broad-line regions (BLRs), one surrounding each SMBH in a binary. We modelled the broad Balmer emission lines in the SDSS spectra of 373 extreme variability AGNs using one broad and several narrow Gaussian components. We report on the discovery of SDSS J021647.53 − 011341.5 (hereafter J0216) as a double-peaked broad emission line source. Among the 373 AGNs, there were five sources that are known as double-peaked emission line sources. Three of these have been reported as candidate SMBH binaries in previous studies. We present all six objects and their double-peaked broad Balmer emission lines, and discuss the implications for a tidal disruption event (TDE) interpretation of the extreme variability, assuming the double-peaked sources are SMBH binaries.