2015ApJ...815L...6F

Representing simultaneous black hole accretion during a merger, binary active galactic nuclei (AGNs) could provide valuable observational constraints to models of galaxy mergers and AGN triggering. High-resolution radio interferometer imaging offers a promising method for identifying a large and uniform sample of binary AGNs because it probes a generic feature of nuclear activity and is free from dust obscuration. Our previous search yielded 52 strong candidates of kiloparsec-scale binaries over the 92 deg² of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 area with 2"-resolution Very Large Array (VLA) images. Here we present 0".3-resolution VLA 6 GHz observations for six candidates that have complete optical spectroscopy. The new data confirm the binary nature of four candidates and identify the other two as line of sight projections of radio structures from single AGNs. The four binary AGNs at z ∼ 0.1 reside in major mergers with projected separations of 4.2-12 kpc. Optical spectral modeling shows that their hosts have stellar masses between 10.3 < log(M_*/M_☉) < 11.5 and velocity dispersions between i120 < σ_* < 320 km/s. The radio emission is compact (≲0".4) and shows a steep spectrum (-1.8 < α < -0.5) at 6 GHz. The host galaxy properties and the Eddington-scaled accretion rates broadly correlate with the excitation state, similar to the general radio-AGN population at low redshifts. Our estimated binary AGN fraction indicates that simultaneous accretion occurs ≥ 23_–8⁺¹⁵% of the time when a kiloparsec-scale galaxy pair is detectable as a radio-AGN. The high duty cycle of the binary phase strongly suggests that major mergers can trigger and synchronize black hole accretion.