Searching for Spectrally Variable AGNs using Multi-epoch Spectra from SDSS

Using multi-epoch spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN) obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we identify 16 spectrally variable sources, for which the spectral shapes of broad emission lines significantly vary with a time scale of yrs. Out of them, 3 AGNs are already known as changing-look (CL) AGNs by previous studies. 6 AGNs are newly identified as CL AGNs from our study. A majority of these AGNs are relatively faint and their variability in the continuum is small, which may explain their non-detection in the previous studies. 7 sources are known as binary AGN candidates based on the systematic velocity offset between broad emission lines and narrow emission lines. For those sources and 3 CL AGNs, we find that the peak of broad emission lines had been shifted up to a few thousands km/s for ~10 years, implying that those can be promising candidates for pc-scale binary AGNs or recoiling black holes. We plan to conduct multiwavelength follow-up studies to nail down the physical origin of the velocity shift.