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Related papers: Tests for Standard Accretion Disk Models by Variab…

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It is generally thought that AGN optical variability is produced, at least in part, by reprocessing of central X-rays by a surrounding accretion disc, resulting in wavelength-dependent lags between bands. Any good model of AGN optical…

Accreting supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies are the engine of active galactic nuclei (AGN). X-ray light curves of unabsorbed AGN show dramatic random variability on timescales ranging from seconds to years. The power…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-10-29 Mehdy Lefkir , Simon Vaughan , Mike Goad , Daniela Huppenkothen , Phil Uttley

Interband lags in the optical continua of active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been observed over years of monitoring, yet their physical origins remain unclear. While variable interband lags have been found in a few individual AGN…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-08 Zhen-Bo Su , Zhen-Yi Cai , Hengxiao Guo , Mouyuan Sun , Jun-Xian Wang

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been observed to vary stochastically with 10-20 rms amplitudes over a range of optical wavelengths where the emission arises in an accretion disk. Since the accretion disk is unlikely to vary coherently,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2011-01-04 Jason Dexter , Eric Agol

A long-standing question is whether active galactic nuclei (AGN) vary like Galactic black hole systems when appropriately scaled up by mass (refs 1-3). If so, we can then determine how AGN should behave on cosmological timescales by…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-05-05 I M McHardy , E Koerding , C Knigge , P Uttley , R P Fender

The UV/optical variability of AGN has long been thought to be driven by the X-ray illumination of the accretion disk. However, recent multi-wavelength campaigns of nearby Seyfert galaxies seem to challenge this paradigm, with an apparent…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-08-31 Christos Panagiotou , Iossif Papadakis , Erin Kara , Elias Kammoun , Michal Dovčiak

The variability mechanisms from jetted AGNs are still under debate. Here the damped random walk (DRW) model, implemented through Gaussian Processe (GPs), is used to fit the $ZTF$ long-term optical light curves of 1684 $\gamma$-ray emission…

Reverberation mapping is one of the main techniques used to study active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks. Traditional continuum reverberation mapping uses short lags between variability in different wavelength AGN light curves on the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-15 Amy Secunda , Sebastian Wagner-Carena , Helen Qu , Shirley Ho

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) sources feature supermassive black holes that launch relativistic plasma jets. They are key $\gamma$-ray sources providing a unique laboratory for studying extreme particle acceleration and plasma physics.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-02-03 Luana Passos-Reis , Elisabete M. de Gouveia Dal Pino , Tarek Hassan , Santiago Pita , Alberto Domínguez

We present the results of a study of different statistical methods currently used in the literature to analyse the (micro)variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from ground-based optical observations. In particular, we focus on the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-02-16 L. Zibecchi , I. Andruchow , S. A. Cellone , D. D. Carpintero , G. E. Romero , J. A. Combi

Radiation from the blazar class of of active galactic nuclei (AGN) exhibits fast time variability which is usually ascribed to instabilities in the emission region near the central supermassive black hole. The variability time scale is…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-16 Kenji Nakagawa , Masaki Mori

The time-scales of the variabilities in changing look (CL) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are usually at the order of years to tens of years (some of them are even shorter than one year), which are much shorter than the viscous timescale of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-07-29 Junjie Feng , Xinwu Cao , Jia-wen Li , Wei-Min Gu

We describe a model-independent method of assessing the uncertainties in cross-correlation lags determined from AGN light curves, and use this method to investigate the reality of lags between UV and optical continuum variations in…

We study the optical variability of a sample of candidate low-mass (dwarf ang Seyfert) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) using Zwicky Transient Facility g-band light curves. Our sample is compiled from broad-line AGNs in dwarf galaxies reported…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-04-11 Z. Franklin Wang , Colin J. Burke , Xin Liu , Yue Shen

We propose a solution to the problem of accretion disc sizes in active galactic nuclei being larger when measured by reverberation mapping than predicted by theory. Considering blackbody reprocessing on a disc with thickness profile $H(r)$,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-12-28 D. A. Starkey , Jiamu Huang , Keith Horne , Douglas N. C. Lin

We study the long-term ($\approx$30 years) radio variability of 43 radio bright AGNs by exploiting the data base of the University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory (UMRAO) monitoring program. We model the periodograms (temporal power…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-01-18 Jongho Park , Sascha Trippe

The origin of short timescale (weeks/months) variability of AGN, whether due to intrinsic disc variations or reprocessing of X-ray emission by a surrounding accretion disc, has been a puzzle for many years. However recently a number of…

We study multi-wavelength variability of a bare Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall~9 using \swift{} monitoring observations consisting of $165$ usable pointings spanning nearly two years and covering six UV/optical bands and X-rays. Fairall~9 is…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-01-18 Main Pal , Gulab C. Dewangan , S. D. Connolly , Ranjeev Misra

Several active galactic nuclei show correlated variations in the ultraviolet/optical range, with time delays increasing at longer wavelengths. Thermal reprocessing of the X-rays illuminating the accretion disk has been proposed as a viable…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-01-27 E. S. Kammoun , M. Dovciak , I. E. Papadakis , M. D. Caballero-Garcia , V. Karas

Swift intensive accretion disk reverberation mapping of four AGN yielded light curves sampled $\sim$200-350 times in 0.3-10 keV X-ray and six UV/optical bands. Uniform reduction and cross-correlation analysis of these datasets yields three…