Identifying supermassive black hole recoil in elliptical galaxies

We study stellar core growth in simulations of merging massive (M_★ > 10¹¹ M_☉) elliptical galaxies by a supermassive black hole(SMBH) displaced by gravitational wave induced recoil velocity. With controlled, dense sampling of the SMBH recoil velocity, we find the core radius originally formed by SMBH binary scouring can grow by a factor of 2–3 when the recoil velocity exceeds ∼ 50 per cent of the central escape velocity, and the mass deficit grows by up to a factor of ∼ 4. Using Bayesian inference we predict the distribution of stellar core sizes formed through this process to peak at ∼ 1 kpc. An orbital decomposition of stellar particles within the core reveals that radial orbits dominate over tube orbits when the recoil velocity exceeds the velocity dispersion of the core, whereas tube orbits dominate for the lowest recoil kicks. A change in orbital structure is reflected in the anisotropy parameter, with a central tangential bias present only for recoil velocities less than the local stellar velocity dispersion. Emulating current integral field unit observations of the stellar line-of-sight velocity distribution, we uncover a distinct signature in the Gauss–Hermite symmetric deviation coefficient h₄ that uniquely constrains the core size due to binary scouring. This signature is insensitive to the later evolution of the stellar mass distribution due to SMBH recoil. Our results provide a novel method to estimate the SMBH recoil magnitude from observations of local elliptical galaxies, and implies these galaxies primarily experienced recoil velocities less than the stellar velocity dispersion of the core.