Related papers: Time lag in transient cosmic accreting sources
We present a new method for determining time delays among the light curves of various images in a gravitational lens. The method is based on constructing a simple model for the source variation and forming a chi squared measure of the…
Context: Extensive, multi-wavelength monitoring campaigns of nearby and higher redshift active galactic nuclei (AGN) have shown that the UV/optical variations are well correlated with time delays which increase with increasing wavelength.…
We present the results from a systematic analysis of the X-ray continuum (`hard') time-lags and intrinsic coherence between the $2-4\,\mathrm{keV}$ and various energy bands in the $0.3-10\,\mathrm{keV}$ range, for ten X-ray bright and…
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…
We present a unified model for the structure and appearance of accretion powered sources across their entire luminosity range from galactic X-ray binaries to luminous quasars, with emphasis on AGN and their phenomenology. Central to this…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been observed to vary stochastically with 10-20 rms amplitudes over a range of optical wavelengths where the emission arises in an accretion disk. Since the accretion disk is unlikely to vary coherently,…
Accretion rates onto AGN are likely to be extremely variable on short timescales; much shorter than the typical cooling time of X-ray emitting gas in elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters. Using the Langevin approach it is shown that, for…
We study the precession of accretion disks in the context of gamma-ray burst inner engines. Our aim is to quantitatively estimate the characteristics of gravitational waves produced by the precession of the transient accretion disk in…
Gamma-ray flares from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) show substantial variability on ultrafast timescales (i.e. shorter than the light crossing time of the AGN's supermassive black hole). We propose that ultrafast variability is a byproduct…
The Fourier frequency dependent hard X-ray lag, first discovered from the analysis of aperiodic variability of the light curves of the black hole candidate Cygnus X-1, turns out to be a property shared by several other accreting compact…
The inter-band lags among the optical broad-band continua of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have been intensively explored over the past decade. However, the nature of the lags remains under debate. Here utilizing two distinct scenarios for…
The brightest events in a time series of cosmological transients obey an observation time dependence which is often overlooked. This dependence can be exploited to probe the global properties of electromagnetic and gravitational wave…
Light-travel-time delays provide one of the most powerful ways of learning about the structure and kinematics of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Estimating delays from observations of AGN variability presents statistical challenges because…
Understanding how mass and angular momentum flow through accretion discs remains a fundamental unsolved problem in astrophysics. Accreting white dwarfs offer an ideal laboratory for addressing this question: their variability occurs on…
Disk continuum reverberation mapping is one of the primary ways we learn about active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks. Reverberation mapping assumes that time-varying X-rays incident on the accretion disk drive variability in…
Apart from regular, low-level stochastic variability, some AGN occasionally show exceptionally large changes in the luminosity, spectral shape, and/or X-ray absorption. The most notable are the changes of the spectral type when the source…
We present soft X-ray variability time-scales for 65 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) derived from ROSAT/PSPC pointing data. For these 65 objects with obvious exponential increasing or decreasing patterns in their light curves, we use the…
In the broad line region of AGN, acceleration occurs naturally when a cloud condenses out of the hot confining medium due to the increase in line opacity as the cloud cools. However, acceleration by radiation pressure is not very efficient…
Recent observations of changing-look active galactic nuclei (AGN) hint at a frequency of accretion activity not fully explained by tidal disruption events (TDEs) stemming from relaxation processes in nucleus star clusters (NSCs),…
X-rays trace accretion onto compact objects in binaries with low mass companions at rates ranging up to near Eddington. Accretion at high rates onto neutron stars goes through cycles with time-scales of days to months. At lower average…