Related papers: Deficiency of Broad Line AGNs in Compact Groups of…
There is clear observational evidence that some narrow line (type 2) AGN have a hidden broad line region (BLR), and are thus intrinsically broad line (type 1) AGN. Does this AGN unification applies for all type 2 AGN? Indirect arguments…
The broad-line region (BLR) disappears in many low-luminosity AGNs, the reason of which is still controversial. The BLRs in AGNs are believed to be associated with the outflows from the accretion disks. Most of the low-luminosity AGNs…
The disk-wind scenario for the broad-line region (BLR) and toroidal obscuration in active galactic nuclei predicts the disappearance of the BLR at low luminosities. In accordance with the model predictions, data from a nearly complete…
We report on continued, $\sim$15 year-long, broad Balmer emission lines in three metal-poor dwarf emission-line galaxies selected from Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopy. The persistent luminosity of the broad Balmer emission indicates…
Major gas-rich mergers of galaxies are expected to play an important role in triggering and fuelling luminous AGN. We present deep multi-band (u/r/z) imaging and long slit spectroscopy of four double-peaked [OIII] emitting AGN, a class of…
In recent surveys of Radio-loud AGN, a new sub-class of objects, known as Weak-Line Radio Galaxies (WLRGs) has emerged. These radio galaxies have only weak, low-ionization optical emission lines. In the X-ray band, these objects are much…
Low-luminosity AGN (with X-ray luminosity < 1e42 ergs/s) far outnumber ordinary AGN, and are therefore perhaps more relevant to our understanding of AGN phenomena and the relationship between AGN and host galaxies. Many normal galaxies…
We analyze the properties of the broad line region (BLR) in low luminosity AGN by using HST/STIS spectra. We consider a sample of 24 nearby galaxies in which the presence of a BLR has been reported from their Palomar ground-based spectra.…
We investigate the process of rapid star formation quenching in a sample of 12 massive galaxies at intermediate redshift (z~0.6) that host high-velocity ionized gas outflows (v>1000 km/s). We conclude that these fast outflows are most…
Far-infrared photometry of broad-line radio galaxies shows this class of AGN to consist of many hot and some cool infrared emitters, with peaks in their spectral energy distributions around 25 micron or longward of 60 micron, respectively.…
The kinematic disturbances associated with major galaxy mergers are known to produce gas inflows, which in turn may trigger accretion onto the supermassive black holes (SMBH) of the participant galaxies. While this effect has been studied…
We have newly identified a substantial number of type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) featuring weak broad-line regions (BLRs) at z < 0.2 from detailed analysis of galaxy spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. These objects…
We show that the recently observed suppression of the gap between the broad line region (BLR) and the narrow line region (NLR) in some AGN can be fully explained by an increase of the gas density in the emitting region. Our model predicts…
We have selected a sample of 292 SDSS Narrow-Emission-Line galaxies known to have formed and evolved in relative isolation to study the nature and origin of the AGN phenomenon. The galaxies in our sample have line fluxes with S/N>3 and were…
We present spectroscopic observations of 27 active galactic nuclei (AGN) with some of the lowest black hole (BH) masses known. We use the high spectral resolution and small aperture of our Keck data, taken with the Echellette Spectrograph…
Compared with numerous X-ray dominant active galactic nuclei (AGNs) without emission-line signatures in their optical spectra, the X-ray selected AGNs with optical emission lines are probably still in the high-accretion phase of black hole…
I review progress made in understanding the nature of the broad-line region (BLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and the role BLRs play in the AGN phenomenon. The high equivalent widths of the lines imply a high BLR covering factor, and…
We study the size of BLRs of low luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei, also called 'dwarf AGN', defined as having ($L_{H\alpha}\le10^{41}{\rm erg\cdot s^{-1}}$)). We more than double the sample size analyzed previously (Wang & Zhang 2003,…
In order to contribute to the general effort aiming at the improvement of our knowledge about the physical conditions within the Broad Line Region (BLR) of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), here we present the results achieved by our analysis…
High cadence, high quality observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) clearly show continuum variations with lags, relative to the shortest observed variable UV continuum, that increase with wavelength ("lag spectra"). These have been…