Possible evidence for the ejection of a supermassive black hole from an ongoing merger of galaxies

Abstract

Attempts of Magain et al (2005) to detect the host galaxy of the bright QSO HE0450--2958 have not been successful. We suggest that the supermassive black hole powering the QSO was ejected from the observed ULIRG at the same redshift and at 1.5 arcsec distance. Ejection could have either be caused by recoil due to gravitational wave emission from a coalescing binary of supermassive black holes or the gravitational slingshot of three or more supermassive black holes in the ongoing merger of galaxies which triggered the starburst activity in the ULIRG. We discuss implications for the possible hierarchical build-up of supermassive black holes from intermediate and/or stellar mass black holes, and for the detection of coalescing supermassive binary black holes by LISA.