Quasars with Periodic Variability: Bayesian Search for Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

Supermassive Black Hole Binaries are the expected outcome of galaxy mergers which reside in the busy centers of galaxies. Their sub-parsec separations makes identifying these objects extremely challenging, but one promising method is to search for periodic variations in quasar light curves, given we can suitably disentangle them from the quasars' stochastically variable brightness. We use a reactive sampler to identify periodicity in quasar light curves as a potential indication of Doppler Boosting induced by Supermassive Black Hole Binaries. A previous paper (Chen et al. 2022) published 127 quasar candidates using similar methodology. In our project, we validate our pipeline for identifying quasar periodicity and use it to rank those quasar candidates. In the future, we look to work with the Zwicky Transient Facility and re-rank the candidates with an additional year of data.