Related papers: A study for testing the Kerr metric with AGN iron …
Reverberation mapping methods have been used to measure masses in about three dozen AGNs. The consistency of the virial masses computed from line widths and time delays, the relationship between black hole mass and host-galaxy stellar bulge…
Spectral timing analyses based upon wavelet transforms provide a new means to study the variability of the X-ray emission from accreting systems, including AGN, stellar mass black holes and neutron stars, and can be used to trace the time…
The central engines of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are powered by accreting supermassive black holes, and while AGNs are known to play an important role in galaxy evolution, the key physical processes occur on scales that are too small to…
We present the first X-ray reverberation mass measurement of a stellar-mass black hole. Accreting stellar-mass and supermassive black holes display characteristic spectral features resulting from reprocessing of hard X-rays by the accretion…
X-ray reverberation in AGN, believed to be the result of the reprocessing of corona photons by the underlying accretion disk, has allowed us to probe the properties of the inner-most regions of the accretion flow and the central black hole.…
The improvement of the calibration relation for determining the size of the broad-line region from the observed optical luminosity of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is a necessary task to study fundamental parameters of distant AGNs such as…
The iron K$\alpha$ line commonly observed in the X-ray spectrum of both stellar-mass and supermassive black hole candidates originates from X-ray fluorescence of the inner accretion disk. Accordingly, it can be used to map the spacetime…
Variable X-ray absorption has been observed in active galactic nuclei (AGN) on several time scales. Observations allow us to identify the absorber with clouds associated either with the clumpy torus (parsec scales, long timescales) or with…
The spacetime geometry around astrophysical black holes is well approximated by the Kerr metric, but deviations from standard predictions are possible in a number of scenarios beyond Einstein's gravity and in the presence of exotic matter.…
Signatures of X-ray reprocessing (reflection) out of an accretion disk are commonly observed in the high-energy spectrum of accreting black holes, and can be used to probe the strong gravity region around these objects. In this paper, we…
Reverberation mapping (RM) is an important technique in studies of active galactic nuclei (AGN). The key idea of RM is to measure the time lag $\tau$ between variations in the continuum emission from the accretion disc and subsequent…
This contribution briefly reviews the reverberation mapping technique which leads to determination of black hole masses. I focus on the emerging relation between the broad-line region size and the active galactic nucleus (AGN) luminosity,…
After reviewing the basic physics of X-ray reflection in AGN, we present three case studies which illustrate the current state of X-ray reflection studies. For the low-luminosity AGN NGC4258, we find that the iron line is much narrower than…
We selected a sample of 28 Type 1 AGNs for which a black hole mass has been inferred using the reverberation mapping technique and single epoch scaling relations. All 28 sources show clear evidence of the "Big Blue Bump" in the optical-UV…
(abridged) With most physicists and astrophysicists in agreement that black holes do indeed exist, the focus of astrophysical black hole research has shifted to the detailed properties of these systems. Nature has provided us with an…
We present an improved and expanded simply parameterized phenomenological model of the broad line region (BLR) in active galactic nuclei (AGN) for modeling reverberation mapping data. By modeling reverberation mapping data directly, we can…
We show that X-ray reverberation mapping can be used to measure the distance to type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This is because X-ray photons originally emitted from the `corona' close to the black hole irradiate the accretion disc…
We present the first X-ray reflection model for testing the assumption that the metric of astrophysical black holes is described by the Kerr solution. We employ the formalism of the transfer function proposed by Cunningham. The calculations…
Recent X-ray observations of microquasars and Seyfert galaxies reveal broad emission lines in their spectra, which can arise in the innermost parts of accretion disks. Simulations indicate that at low inclination angle the line is measured…
Reverberation-mapping campaigns have revolutionized our understanding of AGN. They have allowed the direct determination of the broad-line region size, enabled mapping of the gas distribution around the central black hole, and are starting…