Related papers: Simulating the timescale dependent color variation…
Black holes (BHs) surrounded by accretion disks are present in the Universe at different scales of masses, from microquasars up to the active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The current picture remains ad hoc due to the complexity of the magnetic…
The possibility that some of the observed X-ray and optical variability in active galactic nuclei and galactic black hole candidates is produced in accretion disks through the development of a self-organized critical state is reconsidered.…
Some of the accreting black holes exhibit much stronger variability patterns than the usual stochastic variations. Radiation pressure instability is one of the proposed mechanisms which could account for this effect. We aim to model…
The characteristic timescale ($\tau$) of continuum variability of the accretion disk in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is known to be related to the thermal timescale, which is predicted to scale with AGN luminosity ($L$) and restframe…
We model astrophysical disk surface brightness fluctuations as an inhomogeneous, anisotropic, time-dependent Gaussian random field. The field locally obeys the stochastic partial differential equation of a Mat\'ern field, which has a power…
Over the past decade, a significant amount of effort has been put into investigating the ultraviolet (UV) and optical variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Comprehensive studies of intensive multi-wavelength monitoring and surveys…
We present the latest development of the disk gravitational instability and fragmentation model, originally introduced by us to explain episodic accretion bursts in the early stages of star formation. Using our numerical hydrodynamics model…
We investigate the UV-optical (longward of Ly$\alpha$ 1216\AA) spectral variability of nearly 9000 quasars ($0<z<4$) using multi-epoch photometric data within the SDSS Stripe 82 region. The regression slope in the flux-flux space of a…
Accretion disks in AGN should be subject to the same type of instability as in cataclysmic variables (CVs) or in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), which leads to dwarf nova and soft X-ray transient outbursts. It has been suggested that this…
We present an analysis of quasar variability from data collected during a photometric monitoring of 50 objects carried out at CNPq/Laboratorio Nacional de Astrofisica, Brazil, between March 1993 and July 1996. A distinctive feature of this…
Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CLAGN) feature order-of-magnitude variability in both the continuum and broad line luminosities on months-to-years long timescales, and are currently unexplained. Simulations have demonstrated that…
The low frequency radio luminosity is believed to be an indicator of jet power, while the optical/UV emission is probably from accretion discs in the nuclei of steep-spectrum radio quasars. We present a correlation between the ratio of…
Quasars are variable and their variability can both constrain their physical properties and help to identify them. We look for ways to efficiently identify quasars exhibiting consistent variability over multi-year time-scales, based on a…
We analyze 3 epochs of ultraviolet (UV), optical and near-infrared (NIR) observations of the Taurus transitional disk GM Aur using the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Infrared Telescope Facility SpeX spectrograph.…
"Changing-look" quasars are a new class of highly variable active galactic nuclei that have changed their spectral type over surprisingly short timescales of just a few years. The origin of this phenomenon is debated, but is likely to…
We investigate the time-dependent variations of ultraviolet (UV) black hole mass estimates of quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). From SDSS spectra of 615 high-redshift (1.69 < z < 4.75) quasars with spectra from two epochs, we…
Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) turbulence can drive significant temperature fluctuations in the accretion disk of an active galactic nucleus (AGN). As a result, the disk can be highly inhomogeneous and has a half-light radius larger than the…
We present a method that we developed to discern where the optical microvariability (OM) in quasars originates: in the accretion disk (related to thermal processes) or in the jet (related to non-thermal processes). Analyzing nearly…
The correlation between the X-ray and UV luminosities observed in quasars, spanning a wide redshift range and holding true for several decades in both spectral bands, suggests the presence of a universal mechanism governing the transfer of…
We analyze extensive spectroscopic and photometric data of the hypervariable quasar SDSS J131424+530527 (RMID 017) at z=0.456, an optical "changing look" quasar from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping project that increased…