Astronomy Tea Talk

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the centers of most massive galaxies. A second population of "wandering" massive black holes (MBHs) at different mass scales and distance scales from the center is expected in the hierarchical galaxy assembly due to galaxy merger. Constraining this population, and determining how often black holes are displaced or deposited during mergers, is important for distinguishing between formation scenarios and for understanding the hierarchical growth of SMBHs, however, finding them is challenging as they are often quiescent. A novel approach to finding wandering SMBHs is through the transient emission of off-nuclear Tidal disruption events (TDEs) which occur when a star is being disrupted by the tidal forces of an SMBH. In this talk I will describe the recent advances on this front and what we can learn from the growing numbers of wandering SMBHs discovered thanks to their multi-wavelength TDE emission and high-resolution optical and radio observations.