Probing the elliptical orbital configuration of the close binary of supermassive black holes with differential interferometry

¹ Department of astronomy, Faculty of mathematics, University of Belgrade, Studentski trg 16, Belgrade 11000, Serbia
e-mail: andjelka@matf.bg.ac.rs
² Key Laboratory for Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19B Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, PR China
e-mail: songshengyuyang@ihep.ac.cn, wangjm@ihep.ac.cn
³ School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049, PR China
⁴ National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20A Datun Road, Beijing 100020, PR China
⁵ Astronomical observatory Belgrade, Volgina 7, PO Box 74 11060, Belgrade 11060, Serbia

Received: 24 June 2020
Accepted: 20 September 2020

Abstract

Context. Obtaining detections of electromagnetic signatures from the close binaries of supermassive black holes (CB-SMBH) is still a great observational challenge. The Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will serve as a robust astrophysics suite offering the opportunity to probe the structure and dynamics of CB-SMBH at a high spectral and angular resolution.

Aims. Here, we explore and illustrate the application of differential interferometry on unresolved CB-SMBH systems in elliptical orbital configurations. We also investigate certain peculiarities of interferometry signals for a single SMBH with clouds in elliptical orbital motion.

Methods. Photocentre displacements between each SMBH and the regions in their disc-like broad line regions (BLR) appear as small interferometric differential phase variability. To investigate the application of interferometric phases for the detection of CB-SMBH systems, we simulated a series of differential interferometry signatures, based on our model comprising ensembles of clouds surrounding each supermassive black hole in a CB-SMBH. By setting the model to the parameters of a single SMBH with elliptical cloud motion, we also calculated a series of differential interferometry observables for this case.

Results. We found various deviations from the canonical S-shape of the CB-SMBH phase profile for elliptically configured CB-SMBH systems. The amplitude and specific shape of the interferometry observables depend on the orbital configurations of the CB-SMBH system. We get distinctive results when considering anti-aligned angular momenta of cloud orbits with regard to the total CB-SMBH angular momentum. We also show that their velocity distributions differ from the aligned cloud orbital motion. Some simulated spectral lines from our model closely resemble observations from the Paα line obtained from near-infrared AGN surveys. We found differences between the “zoo” of differential phases of single SMBH and CB-SMBH systems. The “zoo” of differential phases for a single SMBH take a deformed S shape. We also show how their differential phase shape, amplitude, and slope evolve with various sets of cloud orbital parameters and the observer’s position.

Conclusions. We calculate an extensive atlas of the interferometric observables, revealing distinctive signatures for the elliptical configuration CB-SMBH. We also provide an interferometry atlas for the case of a single SMBH with clouds with an elliptical motion, which differs from those of a CB-SMBH. These maps can be useful for extracting exceptional features of the BLR structure from future high-resolution observations of CB-SMBH systems, but also of a single SMBH with clouds in an elliptical orbital setup.