http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.5975
A population of intermediate-mass black holes (BHs) is predicted to be freely floating in the Milky Way (MW) halo, due to gravitational wave recoil, ejection from triple BH systems, or tidal stripping in the dwarf galaxies that merged to make the MW. As these BHs traverse the gaseous MW disk, a bow shock forms, producing detectable radio synchrotron emission from accelerated electrons. We calculate the synchrotron flux to be $\sim \rm 0.01-10\, mJy$ at GHz frequency, detectable by JVLA, and $\sim0.1-1\,\mu\rm Jy$ in the infrared, detectable by HST and JWST. The discovery of the floating BH population will provide insights on the formation and merger history of the MW as well as on the evolution of massive BHs in the early Universe.
X. Wang and A. Loeb
Wed, 26 Feb 14
17/51