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Continuum and emission-line variability of active galactic nuclei provides a powerful probe of microarcsecond scale structures in the central regions of these sources. In this contribution, we review basic concepts and methodologies used in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-11-03 Bradley M. Peterson

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

Aperiodic variability is a characteristic feature of young stars, massive stars, and active galactic nuclei. With the recent proliferation of time domain surveys, it is increasingly essential to develop methods to quantify and analyze…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-01 Krzysztof Findeisen , Ann Marie Cody , Lynne Hillenbrand

The time lag between optical and near-infrared continuum emission in active galactic nuclei (AGN) shows a tight correlation with luminosity and has been proposed as a standardisable candle for cosmology. In this paper, we explore the use of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2016-10-12 S. F. Hönig , D. Watson , M. Kishimoto , P. Gandhi , M. Goad , K. Horne , F. Shankar , M. Banerji , B. Boulderstone , M. Jarvis , M. Smith , M. Sullivan

Intensive reverberation mapping monitoring programs combine ground-based photometric observations from different telescopes, requiring intercalibration of lightcurves to reduce systematic instrumental differences. We present a new iterative…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2025-06-02 Roberta Vieliute , Juan V. Hernández Santisteban , Keith Horne , Hannah Cornfield

In this paper, standard accretion disk models of AGNs are tested using light curves of 26 objects well observed for reverberation mapping. Time scales of variations are estimated by the most common definition of the variability time scale…

Astrophysics · Physics 2014-01-10 H. T. Liu , J. M. Bai , X. H. Zhao , L. Ma

The cross-correlation function (CCF) is commonly employed in the study of AGN, where it is used to probe the structure of the broad line region by line reverberation, to study the continuum emission mechanism by correlating multi-waveband…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2013-02-07 Tal Alexander

Due to the finite size of the disk and the temperature fluctuations producing the variability, microlensing changes the actual time delays between images of strongly lensed AGN on the $\sim$day(s) light-crossing time scale of the emission…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-08-28 Kai Liao

We review some practical aspects of measuring the amplitude of variability in `red noise' light curves typical of those from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). The quantities commonly used to estimate the variability amplitude in AGN light…

Astrophysics · Physics 2010-04-06 S. Vaughan , R. Edelson , R. S. Warwick , P. Uttley

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

The quasi-symmetric shape of the lightcurves, as seen in the X-rays and in the optical, together with the fast variations of the flux observed, suggest that the cooling time for the highest energy electrons may be shorter than the light…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Marco Chiaberge , Annalisa Celotti , Gabriele Ghisellini

We present optical broadband (B and R) observations of the Seyfert 1 nucleus NGC 3516, obtained at Wise Observatory from 1997 March to 1998 September, contemporaneously with the X-ray 2-10 keV measurements of RXTE. The cross correlation…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Dan Maoz , Rick Edelson , Kirpal Nandra

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) vary in their brightness across all wavelengths. Moreover, longer wavelength ultraviolet - optical continuum light curves appear to be delayed with respect to shorter wavelength light curves. A simple way to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-01-27 David Starkey , Keith Horne , Carolin Villforth

Information on the structure around active galactic nuclei (AGN) has long been derived from measuring lags in their varying light output at different wavelengths. In principle, infrared data would reach to larger radii, potentially even…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-03-17 E. Elmer , M. Merrifield , O. Almaini , W. G. Hartley , D. T. Maltby

It is known that the dependence of the emission-line luminosity of a typical cloud in the active galactic nuclei broad-line regions (BLRs) upon the incident flux of ionizing continuum can be nonlinear. We study how this nonlinearity can be…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Alexander V. Melnikov , Ivan I. Shevchenko

We report the detection of a long-timescale negative lag, where the blue bands lag the red bands, in the nearby Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall 9. Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) light curves show variability over a wide range of timescales. By…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-08-09 Philippe Z. Yao , Amy Secunda , Yan-Fei Jiang , Jenny E. Greene , Ashley Villar

Continuum reverberation mapping probes the size scale of the optical continuum-emitting region in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The source of this emission has long been thought to originate from the accretion disk, but recent studies…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-11-11 Jake A. Miller , Edward M. Cackett , Misty C. Bentz , Michael R. Goad , Kirk T. Korista , Ian M. McHardy

We use nine years of gamma-ray data provided by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) to systematically study the light curves of more than two thousand active galactic nuclei (AGN) included in recent Fermi-LAT catalogs. Ten different…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-07-01 P. Peñil , A. Domínguez , S. Buson , M. Ajello , J. Otero-Santos , J. A. Barrio , R. Nemmen , S. Cutini , B. Rani , A. Franckowiak , E. Cavazzuti

Previous works concerning active galactic nuclei (AGN) variability (e.g., Blandford \& McKee 1982) have assumed that the emission characteristics of illuminated clouds are purely a function of the instant continuum flux to which they are…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-28 Jason A. Taylor

The light curve of an exoplanetary transit can be used to estimate the planetary radius and other parameters of interest. Because accurate parameter estimation is a non-analytic and computationally intensive problem, it is often useful to…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Joshua A. Carter , Jennifer C. Yee , Jason Eastman , B. Scott Gaudi , Joshua N. Winn