Related papers: The Intrinsic Quasar Luminosity Function: Accounti…
Quasars are thought to be powered by supermassive black holes accreting surrounding gas. Central to this picture is a putative accretion disk which is believed to be the source of the majority of the radiative output. It is well known,…
We aim to use signatures of microlensing induced by stars in the foreground lens galaxy to infer the size of the accretion disk in the gravitationally lensed quasar Q 0957+561. The long-term photometric monitoring of this system (which so…
We present the results from axisymmetric time-dependent HD calculations of gas flows which are under the influence of gravity of a black hole in quasars. We assume that the flows are non-rotating and exposed to quasar radiation. We take…
We use the microlensing variability observed for eleven gravitationally lensed quasars to show that the accretion disk size at a rest-frame wavelength of 2500 Angstroms is related to the black hole mass by log(R_{2500}/cm)=(15.78\pm0.12) +…
Non-steady and eruptive phenomena in quasars are thought to be associated with the Eddington or super-Eddington luminous stage. Although there is no lack in hypotheses about the total duration of such a stage, the latter remains essentially…
Since the radiation from different portions in the central region of a quasar can be successively amplified during a microlensing event, microlensing light curves provide us with fruitful information regarding the emissivity distribution of…
We study the photocenter position variability due to variations in the quasar inner structure. We consider variability in the accretion disk emissivity and torus structure variability due to different illumination by the central source. We…
An accretion flow onto a supermassive black hole is the primary process powering quasars. However, a geometry of this flow is not well constrained. Both global MHD simulations and observations suggest that there are several emission…
The well-known bluer-when-brighter trend observed in quasar variability is a signature of the complex processes in the accretion disk, and can be a probe of the quasar variability mechanism. Using a sample of 604 variable quasars with…
We consider thin accretion disks in the field of a class of rotating regular black holes. For this purpose, we obtain the radius of the innermost stable circular orbit, $r_{ISCO}$ and efficiency of accretion disk in converting matter into…
The co-evolution of a supermassive black hole with its host galaxy through cosmic time is encoded in its spin. At $z>2$, supermassive black holes are thought to grow mostly by merger-driven accretion leading to high spin. However, it is…
We explore the evolution of the X-ray luminosity function of quasars and the intrinsic correlation between the X-ray and 2500\AA $\,$ ultraviolet luminosities, utilizing techniques verified in previous works and a sample of over 4000…
Quasars (QSOs) emit an enormous amount of light as a result of the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Thanks to their luminosity, the most distant known QSOs allow us to trace the growth of SMBHs deep into the epoch of…
We show that our previously proposed anti-hierarchical baryon collapse scenario for the joint evolution of black holes and host galaxies predicts quasar luminosity functions at redshifts 1.5<z<6 and local properties in nice agreement with…
Bolometric corrections based on the optical-to-ultraviolet continuum spectrum of quasars are widely used to quantify their radiative output, although such estimates are affected by a myriad of uncertainties, such as the generally unknown…
We have assembled a sample of 37 RLQs that have been imaged with the HST in order to investigate their black hole masses, accretion rates, and the structure of their accretion disks. The black hole masses were estimated from the…
We propose that relative variability on short time-scales of the multiple images of a lensed quasar, after removal of the time delay, may be caused by hot spots or other moving structures in the accretion disk crossing microlens caustics…
We use semi-analytic modeling on top of the Millennium simulation to study the joint formation of galaxies and their embedded supermassive black holes. Our goal is to test scenarios in which black hole accretion and quasar activity are…
The luminous electromagnetic emission from distant active galactic nuclei (AGNs) including quasars is believed to be powered by accretion onto super-massive black holes (SMBHs). In the standard unification model for AGNs a dusty torus…
With close pairs of quasars at different redshifts, a background quasar sightline can be used to study a foreground quasar's environment in absorption. We used a sample of 17 Lyman limit systems with column density N_HI > 10^19 cm^-2…