Related papers: Constraints on jet-driven disk accretion in Sagitt…
The extremely hot and tenuous accretion flow in the immediate vicinity of Sgr A* is believed to be invisible (too dim) in the X-ray band, except for short X-ray flares. Here we point out that during pericenter passages, close brightest…
Both gas accretion (infall) and winds (outflow) change a galaxy's metallicity and gas fraction, lowering the effective yield. Low effective yields in galaxies with rotation speeds < 120 km/s have been widely interpreted as the onset of…
Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, exhibits episodic near-infrared flares. The recent monitoring of three such events by the GRAVITY instrument has shown that some flares are associated with orbital…
Using the Submillimeter Array, we have made the first high angular resolution measurements of the linear polarization of Sagittarius A* at submillimeter wavelengths, and the first detection of intra-day variability in its linear…
Massive stars may form in or be captured into AGN disks. Recent 1D studies employing stellar-evolution codes have demonstrated the potential for rapid growth of such stars through accretion up to a few hundred $M_\odot$. We perform 3D…
In the dynamics of accretion disks, the presence of collective effects associated with the self-gravity of the disk is expected to affect not only the momentum transport, but also the relevant energy balance equations, which could differ…
Observations show that the accretion flows in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) probably have a two-component structure with an inner ADAF and an outer truncated accretion disk. As shown by Taam et al. (2012), the truncation…
(Abridged) We study stability of gas accretion in Active Galactic Nuclei. Our grid based simulations cover a radial range from 0.1 to 200 pc. Here, as in previous studies by our group, we include gas radiative cooling as well as heating by…
This paper reviews our current understanding of low-luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs) in the context of the advection-dominated accretion flow. The best investigated source, the supermassive black hole in our galactic center, Sgr A*, is emphasized…
Numerous observations indicate that galaxies need a continuous gas supply to fuel star formation and explain the star formation history. However, direct observational evidence of gas accretion remains rare. Using the EAGLE cosmological…
If the atmospheric density $\rho_{atm}$ in the accretion disk of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) is sufficiently low, scattering in the atmosphere can produce a non-blackbody emergent spectrum. For a given bolometric luminosity, at…
The mm to sub-mm spectrum of Sgr A* at the Galactic center, as well as its polarization characteristics, are consistent with the inner 10 Schwarzschild radii of a tight Keplerian emitting region of hot, magnetized, orbiting gas. This plasma…
Multiple models have been suggested over the years to explain the structure and support of accretion disks around supermassive black holes, from the standard thin thermal-pressure-dominated $\alpha$-disk model to more recent models that…
Images from the vicinity of the black hole horizon at the Galactic centre (Sgr A*) could be obtained in the near future with a Very Large Baseline Array of sub-millimetre telescopes. The recently observed short-term infrared and X-ray…
A supermassive black hole SgrA* with the mass ~4x10^6 Msun resides at the centre of our galaxy. Building up such a massive black hole within the ~10^10 year lifetime of our galaxy would require a mean accretion rate of ~4x10^-4 Msun/yr. At…
Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a potential VHE gamma-ray and cosmic-ray source. We examine limits to gap-type particle acceleration in the magnetosphere of Sgr A*, showing that in the current phase of activity proton acceleration to PeV…
We study model images and polarization maps of Sagittarius A* at 230 GHz. We post-process GRMHD simulations and perform a fully relativistic radiative transfer calculation of the emitted synchrotron radiation to obtain polarized images for…
The compact radio source Sgr A* is coincident with a 4 million solar mass black hole at the dynamical center of the Galaxy and is surrounded by dense orbiting ionized and molecular gas. We present high resolution radio continuum images of…
The near-infrared emission from the black hole at the Galactic center (Sgr A*) has unique properties. The most striking feature is a suggestive periodic sub-structure that has been observed in a couple of flares so far. Using near-infrared…
It is commonly believed that accretion discs are truncated and their inner regions are described by advection dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) in the hard spectral state of black hole X-ray binaries. However, the increasing occurrence of a…