Related papers: Nuclear obscuration in active galactic nuclei
The main requirements for fueling an active galactic nucleus and to form massive black holes are reviewed. Low-luminosity AGN can be fueled easily from the local star clusters, near the nucleus, and the various stellar processes are…
The cores of active galactic nuclei (AGN) harbor some of the most extreme conditions of matter and energy in the Universe. One of the major goals of high-energy astrophysics is to probe these extreme environments in the vicinity of…
X-ray spectral modeling is a powerful tool for studying the immediate environment of accreting objects, including supermassive black holes. Several models, either phenomenological or physically driven, have been developed over the past…
Powerful winds driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) are often invoked to play a fundamental role in the evolution of both supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies, quenching star formation and explaining the tight…
The black-hole/accretion-disk paradigm for active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is now reasonably secure, but there are still important unresolved issues, some of which will require the capabilities of an 8 to 10-m class UV/optical space-based…
A complete census of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is a prerequisite for understanding the growth of supermassive black holes across cosmic time. A significant challenge toward this goal is the whereabouts of heavily obscured AGN that remain…
Multiple models have been suggested over the years to explain the structure and support of accretion disks around supermassive black holes, from the standard thin thermal-pressure-dominated $\alpha$-disk model to more recent models that…
Accretion states, which are universally observed in stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries, are also anticipated in active galactic nuclei (AGN). This is the case at low luminosities, when the jet-corona coupling dominates the energy…
According to theory, the torus of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is sustained from a wind coming off the accretion disk, and for low efficient AGN, it has been proposed that such structure disappears. However, the exact conditions for its…
Galactic nuclei should contain a cluster of stars and compact objects in the vicinity of the central supermassive black hole due to stellar evolution, minor mergers and gravitational dynamical friction. By analogy with protoplanetary…
Radiation, winds and jets from the active nucleus of a massive galaxy can interact with its interstellar medium leading to ejection or heating of the gas. This can terminate star formation in the galaxy and stifle accretion onto the black…
We investigate the far-infrared (far-IR) incidence of X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGN) and non-AGN galaxies as a function of stellar mass (M$_*$), star formation rate (SFR), and specific black hole accretion rate…
The Cosmic X-ray background carries the information of cosmic accretion onto super-massive black holes. The intensity at its peak can be used to constrain the integrated space density of highly obscured AGNs. Determining the shape and…
Recent time-resolved spectral studies of a few Active Galactic Nuclei in hard X-rays revealed occultations of the X-ray primary source probably by Broad Line Region (BLR) clouds. An important open question on the structure of the…
It has long been suspected that Active Galactic Nuclei are powered by accretion of matter onto massive black holes and this belief implies their presence in the nuclei of most nearby galaxies as "relics" of past activity. Just a few years…
Type 2 active galactic nuclei (AGN) show signatures of accretion onto a supermassive black hole through strong, high-ionization, narrow emission lines extended on scales of 100s to 1000s of parsecs, but they lack the broad emission lines…
The evidence for obscured AGN and in particular for obscured quasars is discussed. The spectrum and source modelling of the X-ray Background suggests that most massive black holes grow by obscured accretion. A possible major growth phase…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) unification, which implies a large number of obscured AGN, can explain the optical, infrared and X-ray content of deep multiwavelength surveys. Here, we show that the same model also successfully explains the…
We assess the potential of nuclear starburst disks to obscure the Seyfert-like AGN that dominate the hard X-ray background at z~1. Over 1200 starburst disk models, based on the theory developed by Thompson et al., are calculated for five…
Most of the super-massive black holes in the Universe accrete material in an obscured phase. While it is commonly accepted that the "dusty torus" is responsible for the nuclear obscuration, its geometrical, physical, and chemical properties…