Related papers: Non-Thermal emissions from shocked shells driven b…
The main goal of this thesis is to study the physical processes that can produce non-thermal emission at high energies in astrophysical objects capable to accelerate particles up to relativistic velocities. In particular, we have studied…
An increasing number of observations and simulations suggests that low-power (<10$^{44}$ erg s$^{-1}$) jets may be a significant channel of feedback produced by active galactic nuclei (AGN), but little is known about their actual effect on…
Recently, strong AGN outbursts at the centers of galaxy clusters have been found. Using a simple model, we study particle acceleration around a shock excited by an outburst and estimate nonthermal emission from the accelerated particles. We…
Various observations are revealing the widespread occurrence of fast and powerful winds in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that are distinct from relativistic jets, likely launched from accretion disks and interacting strongly with the gas of…
Powerful radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) with large Mpc-scale jets have been theoretically motivated as emitters of high-energy cosmic rays. Recent radio observations have established a populous class of young radio-loud galaxies…
Feedback by active galactic nuclei (AGN) is frequently invoked to explain the cut-off of the galaxy luminosity function at the bright end and the absence of cooling flows in galaxy clusters. Meanwhile, there are recent observations of shock…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) drive fast winds in the interstellar medium of their host galaxies. It is commonly assumed that the high ambient densities and intense radiation fields in galactic nuclei imply short cooling times, thus making…
Non-blazar Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) have emerged as a new gamma-ray emitting source class on the extragalactic sky and started to deepen our understanding of the physical processes and the nature of AGN in general. The detection of…
Shock acceleration by the shells of supernova remnants (SNRs) has been hypothesized to be the mechanism that produces the bulk of Galactic Cosmic Rays, possibly up to PeV energies. Some SNRs have been shown to accelerate cosmic rays to TeV…
We present the first results from an X-ray and optical survey of a sample of AGN radio jets with Chandra and HST. We focus here on the first six sources observed at X-rays, in four of which a bright X-ray jet was detected for the first…
The extragalactic sources of ultra-high-energy (E > 4x10^19 eV) cosmic rays that make a small contribution to the flux of particles recorded by ground-based arrays are discussed. We show that cosmic rays from such sources can produce a…
The observations of gamma-ray emission from pulsars with the Fermi-LAT detector and the detection of the Crab pulsar with the VERITAS array of Cherenkov telescopes at energies above 100 GeV make it unlikely that curvature radiation is the…
We have measured the angular sizes of radio cores of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and analyzed their sky distributions and frequency dependencies to study synchrotron opacity in AGN jets and the strength of angular broadening in the…
Seyfert galaxies and quasars were first discovered through optical and radio techniques, but in recent years high-energy emission, that can penetrate central gas and dust, has become essentially the defining characteristic of an AGN. AGNs…
In this talk we briefly review the inverse Compton (IC) scattering of nuclear photons in the lobes of radio galaxies and quasars. We concentrate on the possibility to test this model with the Chandra observatory and to constrain the…
Recent observations in X-rays and gamma-rays of nearby FRI radio galaxies have raised the question of the origin of the emission detected in the termination structures of their jets. The study of these structures can give information on the…
The origin of the diffuse gamma-ray background in the range from hundreds keV to several MeV is not known conclusively. From current models and observations it is believed that, at least partially, this background is formed by blazars and…
There is clear evidence that the $\gamma$-ray emission from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is attributed to the inverse Compton scatterings in the relativistic blobs near the massive black holes. If the soft seed photons are from the regions…
Jets are ubiquitous in the Universe. They are collimated outflows whose origin is associated to an accretion disc and a central object, and can be very powerful non-thermal emitters. Jets form in active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts,…
The Italian gamma-ray satellite AGILE has recently reported the detection of some variable high-energy sources likely of galactic origin. These sources do not have any obvious counterpart at lower energies. We propose that these sources are…