Related papers: The Quasar Accretion Disk Size - Black Hole Mass R…
Luminous accretion disks around black holes are expected to have densities of $\sim 10^{15-22}\,$cm$^{-3}$, which are high enough such that plasma physics effects become important. Many of these effects have been traditionally neglected in…
We studied optical-ultraviolet spectral energy distribution of 10 weak emission-line quasars (WLQs) which lie at redshifts z = 0.19 and 1.43 < z < 3.48. The theoretical models of their accretion disk continua are created based on the…
We describe a method to identify inclined water maser disks orbiting massive black holes and to potentially use them to measure black hole masses. Due to the geometry of maser amplification pathways, the minority of water maser disks are…
We present the black hole mass--bulge velocity dispersion relation for a complete sample of 75 soft X-ray selected AGNs. We find that the AGNs with highest accretion rates relative to Eddington lie below the \mbh--\sig\ relation of broad…
Understanding the interplay between black-hole accretion and star formation, and how to disentangle the two, is crucial to our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. To investigate, we use a combination of optical and…
An empirical relation between the broad line region (BLR) size and optical continuum luminosity is often adopted to estimate the BLR size and then the black hole mass of AGNs. However, optical luminosity may not be a good indicator of…
A potential mechanism is proposed to account for the fact that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in disk galaxies appear to be smaller than those in elliptical galaxies in the same luminosity range. We consider the formation of SMBHs by…
We studied the accretion disc structure in the doubly imaged lensed quasar SDSS J1339+1310 using $r$-band light curves and UV-visible to near-IR (NIR) spectra from the first 11 observational seasons after its discovery. The 2009$-$2019…
Stellar-mass black holes in the low-hard state may hold clues to jet formation and basic accretion disk physics, but the nature of the accretion flow remains uncertain. A standard thin disk can extend close to the innermost stable circular…
The heaviest neutron stars and lightest black holes expected to be produced by stellar evolution leave the mass-range $2.2$ M$_{\odot}\lesssim m \lesssim 5$ M$_\odot$ largely unpopulated. Objects found in this so-called lower mass gap…
The spin measurement of black holes has important implications in physics and astrophysics. Regardless of the specific technique to estimate the black hole spin, all the current approaches assume that the space-time geometry around the…
The `fundamental plane of black hole accretion' (FP), a relation between the radio luminosities ($L_R$), X-ray luminosities ($L_X$), and masses ($M_{BH}$) of hard/quiescent state black hole binaries and low-luminosity active galactic…
To address the discrepancy where disk sizes exceed those predicted by standard models, we explore two extensions to disk size estimates within the UV/optical wavelength range: disk winds and color correction. We provide detailed,…
We place firm upper limits on the global accretion history of massive black holes at z>5 from the recently measured unresolved fraction of the cosmic X-ray background. The maximum allowed unresolved intensity observed at 1.5 keV implies a…
We use the clustering of galaxies around distant active-galactic nuclei to derive an estimate of the relationship between galaxy and black hole mass that obtained during the ancient quasar epoch, at redshifts 2 <~ z <~ 3, when giant black…
The correlations between the mass of supermassive black holes and properties of their host galaxies are investigated through cosmological simulations. Black holes grow from seeds of 100 solar masses inserted into density peaks present in…
We report first results from a large project to measure black hole (BH) mass in high accretion rate active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Such objects may be different from other AGNs in being powered by slim accretion disks and showing saturated…
We construct the relativistic standard steady, optically thick, cold and geometrically thin accretion disk around a distorted Schwarzschild black hole. The distortion of this static and axially symmetric black hole solution, is connected to…
Stellar-mass black holes offer what is perhaps the best scenario to test theories of gravity in the strong-field regime. In particular, f(R) theories, which have been widely discuss in a cosmological context, can be constrained through…
X-ray emission from quasars has been detected up to redshift $z=7.5$, although only limited to a few objects at $z>6.5$. In this work, we present new Chandra observations of five $z>6.5$ quasars. By combining with archival Chandra…