Although the radio emission from most quasars appears to be associated with star forming activity in the host galaxy, about ten percent of optically selected quasars have very luminous relativistic jets apparently powered by a SMBH which is located at the base of the jet. When these jets are pointed close to the line of sight their apparent luminosity is enhanced by Doppler boosting and appears highly variable. High resolution radio interferometry shows directly the outflow of relativistic plasma jets from the SMBH. Apparent transverse velocities in these so-called “blazars” are typically about 7c but reach as much as 50c indicating true velocities within one percent of the speed of light. The jets appear to be collimated and accelerated in regions as much as a hundred parsecs downstream from the SMBH. Measurements made with Earth to space interferometers indicate apparent brightness temperatures of ~ 1014 K or more. This is well in excess of the limits imposed by inverse Compton cooling. The modest Doppler factors deduced from the observed ejection speeds appear to be inadequate to explain the high observed brightness temperatures in terms of relativistic boosting.

The capture and disruption of stars by supermassive black holes (SMBHs), and the formation and coalescence of binaries, are inevitable consequences of the presence of SMBHs at the cores of galaxies. Pairs of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and binary SMBHs are important stages in the evolution of galaxy mergers, and an intense search for these systems is currently ongoing. In the early and advanced stages of galaxy merging, observations of the triggering of accretion onto one or both BHs inform us about feedback processes and BH growth. Identification of the compact binary SMBHs at parsec and sub-parsec scales provides us with important constraints on the interaction processes that govern the shrinkage of the binary beyond the “final parsec”. Coalescing binary SMBHs are among the most powerful sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the universe. Stellar tidal disruption events (TDEs) appear as luminous, transient, accretion flares when part of the stellar material is accreted by the SMBH. About 30 events have been identified by multi-wavelength observations by now, and they will be detected in the thousands in future ground-based or space-based transient surveys. The study of TDEs provides us with a variety of new astrophysical tools and applications, related to fundamental physics or astrophysics. Here, we provide a review of the current status of observations of SMBH pairs and binaries, and TDEs, and discuss astrophysical implications.

I present examples of radio AGN with binary nuclei which provide the direct radio evidence for binary Super Massive Black Holes (SMBH) driving the AGN activity. There is also other evidence for distorted radio morphology and periodic variability which may indicate the presence of a second (inactive) SMBH. Finally I enumerate a number of possible radio tracers for the binary SMBH merger events.

We present an analysis of the optical nuclear spectra from the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in a sample of giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxies. GLSB galaxies are extreme late type spirals that are large, isolated and poorly evolved compared to regular spiral galaxies. Earlier studies have indicated that their nuclei have relatively low mass black holes. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we selected a sample of 30 GLSB galaxies that showed broad Hα emission lines in their AGN spectra. In some galaxies such as UGC 6284, the broad component of Hα is more related to outflows rather than the black hole. One galaxy (UGC 6614) showed two broad components in Hα, one associated with the black hole and the other associated with an outflow event. We derived the nuclear black hole (BH) masses of 29 galaxies from their broad Hα parameters. We find that the nuclear BH masses lie in the range 105 – 107 M⊙. The bulge stellar velocity dispersion σe was determined from the underlying stellar spectra. We compared our results with the existing BH mass - velocity dispersion (MBH–σe) correlations and found that the majority of our sample lie in the low BH mass regime and below the MBH–σe correlation. The effects of galaxy orientation in the measurement of σe and the increase of σe due to the effects of bar are probable reasons for the observed offset for some galaxies, but in many galaxies the offset is real. A possible explanation for the MBH–σe offset could be lack of mergers and accretion events in the history of these galaxies which leads to a lack of BH-bulge co-evolution.

The circum-nuclear region in an active galaxy is often complex with presence of high excitation gas, collimated radio outflow, and star formation activities, besides the actively accreting supermassive black hole. The unique spatial resolving power of Chandra X-ray imaging spectroscopy enables more investigations to disentangle the active galactic nuclei and starburst activities. For galaxies in the throes of a violent merging event such as NGC6240, we were able to resolve the high temperature gas surrounding its binary active black holes and discovered a large scale soft X-ray halo.

While a broad line of the Fe Kα emission is commonly found in the X-ray spectra of typical Seyfert galaxies, the situation is unclear in the case of Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s)—an extreme subset which are generally thought to harbor less massive black holes with higher accretion rates. We report results of our study of the assemble property of the Fe K line in NLS1s by stacking the X-ray spectra of a large sample of 51 NLS1s observed with XMM-Newton. We find in the stacked X-ray spectra a prominent, broad emission feature over 4–7 keV, which is characteristic of the broad Fe Kα line. Our results suggest that a relativistic broad Fe line may in fact be common in NLS1s. The line profile is used to study the average spin of the black holes in the sample. We find, for the first time, that their black holes are constrained to be likely spinning at averagely low or moderate rates as a population. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the black hole growth in NLS1 galaxies.

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are the products of frequent galaxy mergers. It is very hard to be detected in quiescent galaxy. By using one million particle direct N-body simulations on special many-core hardware (GPU cluster), we study the dynamical co-evolution of SMBHB and its surrounding stars, specially focusing on the evolution of stellar tidal disruption event (TDE) rates before and after the coalescence of the SMBHB. We find a boosted TDE rate during the merger of the galaxies. After the coalescence of two supermassive black holes (SMBHs), the post-merger SMBH can get a kick velocity due to the anisotropic GW radiations. Our results about the recoiling SMBH, which oscillates around galactic center, show that most of TDEs are contributed by unbound stars when the SMBH passing through galactic center. In addition, the TDE light curve in SMBHB system is significantly different from the curve for single SMBH, which can be used to identify the SMBHB.

We model numerically the evolution of 104M⊙ turbulent molecular clouds in near-radial infall onto 106M⊙, equal-mass supermassive black hole binaries, using a modified version of the SPH code gadget-3. We investigate the different gas structures formed depending on the relative inclination between the binary and the cloud orbits. Our first results indicate that an aligned orbit produces mini-discs around each black hole, almost aligned with the binary; a perpendicular orbit produces misaligned mini-discs; and a counter-aligned orbit produces a circumbinary, counter-rotating ring.

The optical/UV and X-ray emissions in luminous AGN are commonly believed to be produced in an accretion disk and an embedded hot corona respectively. We explore the possibility that a geometrically thick coronal gas flow, which is supplied by gravitational capture of interstellar medium or stellar wind, condenses partially to a geometrically thin cold disk and accretes via a thin disk and a corona onto the supermassive black hole. We found that for mass supply rates less than about 0.01 (expressed in Eddington units), condensation does not occur and the accretion flow takes the form of a corona/ADAF. For higher mass supply rates, corona gas condenses to the disk. As a consequence, the coronal mass flow rate decreases and the cool mass flow rate increases towards the black hole. Here the thin disk is characterized by the condensation rate of hot gas as it flows towards the black hole. With increase of mass supply rate, condensation becomes more efficient, while the mass flow rate of the coronal gas attains values of order 0.02 in the innermost regions of the disk, which can help to elucidate the production of strong X-ray with respect to the optical and ultraviolet radiation in high luminosity AGN.

We made dynamical black hole mass measurements from nineteen Seyfert 2 galaxies which host sub-parsec H2O maser disks using the H2O megamaser technique. The nearly perfect Keplerian rotation curves in many of these maser systems guarantee the high accuracy and precision of the black hole mass measurements. With the stellar velocity dispersion (σ∗) of the galaxy bulges measured with the Dupont 2.5 m telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in the South and the Apache Point Observatory (APO) 3.5m telescope in the North, we found that H2O maser galaxies, most of which host pseudo bulges rather than classical bulges, do not all follow the MBH–σ∗ relation shown in the literature. This result is well consistent with the latest findings by Kormendy & Ho (2013) that only early type galaxies and galaxies with classical bulges follow a tight MBH–σ∗ relation. Such a tight correlation may not exist in pseudo bulge galaxies.

Narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies are a sub-class of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with relatively low-mass black holes, accreting near the Eddington rate. A small fraction of them is radio-loud and harbors relativistic jets. As a class, these provide us with new insights into the cause(s) of radio-loudness, the blazar phenomenon at low black hole masses, and the operation of radio-mode feedback. The NLS1 galaxy RXJ2314.9+2243 is remarkable for its multi-wavelength properties. We present new radio observations taken at Effelsberg, and a summary of the recent results from our multi-wavelength study. RXJ2314.9+2243 is radio-loud, luminous in the infrared, has a flat X-ray spectrum and peculiar UV spectrum, and hosts an exceptionally broad and blueshifted [OIII]λ5007 emission line, indicating the presence of a strong outflow. RXJ2314.9+2243 likely represents an extreme case of AGN induced feedback in the local universe.

We have studied four radio-loud Narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies with extreme optical emission-line shifts, indicating radial outflow velocities of up 2450 km s−1. The shifts are accompanied by strong line broadening, up to 2270 km s−1 in [NeV]. A significant ionization stratification (higher line shift at higher ionization potential) of most ions implies that we see a large-scale wind rather than single, localized jet-cloud interactions. The observations are consistent with a scenario, where the signatures of outflows are maximized because of a pole-on view into the central engine of these radio-loud NLS1 galaxies.

1H 0323+342 is one of the rare γ-ray detected narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s), a special subset of active galactic nuclei (AGN) owing to their hybrid behavior of both NLS1s and blazars. The rarity of such kind of sources makes their properties far from being understood. We analyze simultaneous X-ray and UV/optical monitoring observations of 1H 0323+342 performed by Swift over ~7 years. The UV/X-ray correlation and the broad band SED reveal that the X-ray band is dominated by the disk/corona emission during the observations. The large normalized excess variance of the X-ray variability detected with Suzaku suggests a relatively small black hole mass of the order of 107M⊙, consistent with the estimation based on the broad Hβ line in the optical band.

Stars are tidally disrupted and accreted when they approach massive black holes (MBHs) closely, producing a flare of electromagnetic radiation. The majority of the (approximately two dozen) tidal disruption events (TDEs) identified so far have been discovered by their luminous, transient X-ray emission. Once TDEs are detected in much larger numbers, in future dedicated transient surveys, a wealth of new applications will become possible. Here, we present the proposed Einstein Probe mission, which is a dedicated time-domain soft X-ray all-sky monitor aiming at detecting X-ray transients including TDEs in large numbers. The mission consists of a wide-field micro-pore Lobster-eye imager (60° × 60°), and is designed to carry out an all-sky transient survey at energies of 0.5-4 keV. It will also carry a more sensitive telescope for X-ray follow-ups, and will be capable of issuing public transient alerts rapidly. Einstein Probe is expected to revolutionise the field of TDE research by detecting several tens to hundreds of events per year from the early phase of flares, many with long-term, well sampled lightcurves.

Close binary black holes (BBH) are important not only in astrophysics but they would be the strongest gravitational wave sources in the universe. Galaxy-galaxy merging systems are mostly found in optical and X-ray images. In radio, however, the VLBI can resolve the close binary system at pc scale, if their nuclei are radio loud. Recently we analyzed the archive VLBI data of PKS 1155+251, it shows twin core-jets like VLBI structure. In this poster, we present preliminary result from analyzing of the archive data. Further investigations with high frequency VLBI observations are required to confirm if it is a true BBH system.

We report on the progress of our on-going work to search for low-mass black holes (LMBHs) in active galactic nuclei. The masses of black holes are estimated using the broad line width and luminosity obtained from one-epoch optical spectra. As the first step, we fitted the spectra of 1263 objects in the quasar catalog of the SDSS DR10 and obtained accurate measurement of the emission lines. Two AGNs are found to have MBH ~ 106 M⊙. The next step is to analyze the spectra of the DR10 galaxy sample, from which a much larger sample of low-mass AGNs is expected to be obtained.

Recent studies of active galactic nuclei (AGN) found a statistical inverse scaling between the X-ray normalized excess variance σrms2 (variability amplitude) and the black hole mass spanning over MBH = 106 − 109M⊙. We present a study of this relation by including AGN with MBH = 105 − 106M⊙. It is found that the relation is no longer a simple extrapolation of the known inverse proportion, but starts to flatten around 106M⊙. This behavior can be understood by the shape of the power spectrum density of AGN and its dependence on the black hole mass.

It is difficult to find or identifying the binary black holes in parsec scales, since the dual AGN may be merged quickly. It is required to explore more possibilities to identifying binary black holes in parsec scales, we give some discussions, especially with the VLBI methods.

We compare the performance of the very popular Tree-GPU code BONSAI with the older Particle-(Multi)Mesh code SUPERBOX. Both code we run on a same hardware using the GPU acceleration for the force calculation. SUPERBOX is a particle-mesh code with high resolution sub-grid and a higher order NGP (nearest grid point) force-calculation scheme. In our research, we are aiming to demonstrate that the new parallel version of SUPERBOX is capable to do the high resolution simulations of the interaction of the system of disc-bulge-halo composed galaxy. We describe the improvement of performance and scalability of SUPERBOX particularly for the Kepler cluster (NVIDIA K20 GPU). A comparison was made with the very popular and publicly available Tree-GPU code BONSAI†.

In this work we study the stellar-dynamical hardening of unequal mass massive black hole (MBH) binaries in the central regions of galactic nuclei. We present a comprehensive set of direct N-body simulations of the problem, varying both the total mass and the mass ratio of the MBH binary. Our initial model starts as an axisymmetric, rotating galactic nucleus, to describe the situation right after the galaxies have merged, but the black holes are still unbound to each other. We confirm that results presented in earlier works (Berczik et al. 2006; Khan et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2014) about the solution of the “last parsec problem” (sufficiently fast black hole coalescence for black hole growth in cosmological context) are robust for both for the case of unequal black hole masses and large particle numbers. The MBH binary hardening rate depends on the reduced mass ratio through a single parameter function, which quantitatively quite well agrees with standard 3 body scattering theory (see e.g., Hills 1983). Based on our results we conclude that MBH binaries at high redshifts are expected to merge with a factor of ~ 2 more efficiently, which is important to determine the possible overall gravitational wave signals. However, we have not yet fully covered all the possible parameter space, in particular with respect to the preceding of the galaxy mergers, which may lead to a wider variety of initial models, such as initially more oblate and / or even significantly triaxial galactic nuclei. Our N-body simulations were carried out on a new special supercomputers using the hardware acceleration with graphic processing units (GPUs).