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Representing simultaneous black hole accretion during a merger, binary activegalactic nuclei (AGNs) could provide valuable observational constraints tomodels of galaxy mergers and AGN triggering. High-resolution radiointerferometer imaging offers a promising method to identify a large anduniform sample of binary AGNs, because it probes a generic feature of nuclearactivity and is free from dust obscuration. Our previous search yielded 52strong candidates of kpc-scale binaries over the 92 deg$^2$ of the SloanDigital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 area with 2"-resolution Very Large Array(VLA) images. Here we present 0.3"-resolution VLA 6 GHz observations for sixcandidates that have complete optical spectroscopy. The new data confirm thebinary nature of four candidates and identify the other two as line-of-sightprojections of radio structures from single AGNs. The four binary AGNs at $z\sim 0.1$ reside in major mergers with projected separations of 4.2-12 kpc.Optical spectral modeling shows that their hosts have stellar masses between$10.3 < log(M_\star/M_\odot) < 11.5$ and velocity dispersions between $120 <\sigma_\star < 320$ km/s. The radio emission is compact ($<$0.4") and showsteep spectrum ($-1.8 < \alpha < -0.5$) at 6 GHz. The host galaxy propertiesand the Eddington-scaled accretion rates broadly correlate with the excitationstate, similar to the general radio-AGN population at low redshifts. Ourestimated binary AGN fraction indicates that simultaneous accretion occurs$>23^{+15}_{-8}$% of the time when a kpc-scale galaxy pair is detectable as aradio-AGN. The high duty cycle of the binary phase strongly suggests that majormergers can trigger and synchronize black hole accretion.

Binary Active Galactic Nuclei in Stripe 82: Constraints on Synchronized Black Hole Accretion in Major Mergers