MODELING THE GRAVITATIONAL RECOIL IN THE M 83 CENTER

Abstract

Redshift determinations indicate that the radio-quasar J133658.3-295105 is in the nearby universe and not at z ≥ 1 as previously hypothesized. We propose that J133658.3-295105 is produced by the recoil of a black hole (BH) that results from the merger of two or three super massive BHs at the optical nucleus of NGC 5236 (M 83). We analyzed different merging scenarios by means of numerical simulations of binary and triple BH collisions using a third-order post-Newtonian approximation. We show that a merger of 3 BHs is more likely than that of 2 BHs to reproduce the simultaneous kick-off of J133658.3-295105 and the offset of the optical nucleus with respect to the galaxy kinematic center.