The Missing Black Hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud: A Dynamical Prediction for Its Present-Day Location

There are indications that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) hosts a central supermassive black hole (SMBH), yet no direct detection exists: one reason is that its present-day location need not necessarily coincide with the photometric or kinematic centers. Here we frame a dynamical targeting problem and predict the present-day sky location of the LMC SMBH. We model the recent LMC-Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) interaction, which induces a bar-disk offset, and integrate SMBH orbits within a realistic, time-dependent LMC-SMC-Milky Way (MW) potential. We show that the MW tidal field at present epoch exceeds that of the SMC by at least an order of magnitude, setting a preferred direction for coherent, vertical low-amplitude displacements, while the disk asymmetry drives in-plane offsets. Projecting onto the observed LMC frame, the mean of our predicted SMBH probability distribution is located at (α,δ)=(80.23,-69.55), with a 1σ confidence ellipse having semi-major and semi-minor axes of (a,b)=(1.34,0.56), respectively. This mean is about6 arcminutes north of the adopted dynamical center, while the mode coincides with the dynamical center and lies well within the 1σ confidence region. Furthermore, all literature estimates of the LMC center considered here fall within the 2σ confidence region. This provides a concrete, testable target for ongoing and upcoming spectroscopic surveys, transforming the search for the LMC SMBH from an unconstrained problem into a focused observational strategy.