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Description
We have carried out a systematic search for subparsec supermassive black hole (BH) binaries among z<~0.7 Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasars. These are predicted by models of supermassive BH and host galaxy coevolution, therefore their census and population properties constitute an important test of these models. In our working hypothesis, one of the two BHs accretes at a much higher rate than the other and carries with it the only broad emission line region of the system, making the system analogous to a single-lined spectroscopic binary star. Accordingly, we used spectroscopic principal component analysis to search for broad H{beta} emission lines that are displaced from the quasar rest frame by |{Delta}{nu}|>~1000km/s. This method also yields candidates for rapidly recoiling BHs. Of the 88 candidates, several were previously reported in the literature. We found a correlation between the peak offset and skewness of the broad H{beta} profiles, suggesting a common physical explanation for these profiles. We carried out follow-up spectroscopic observations of 68 objects to search for changes in the peak velocities of the H{beta} lines.
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