Related papers: Interpreting radiative efficiency in radio-loud AG…
The current paradigm for radio-quiet AGNs is reviewed, taking into account new results from recent large-scale surveys carried out from the ground and from space. Topics include structure of the central engine, AGN demography,…
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…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) play a crucial role in galaxy evolution by influencing the observational properties of their host galaxies. We investigate the host galaxy properties of X-ray selected AGNs, focusing on differences between…
We present our latest results on the connection between accretion rate and relativistic jet power in AGN, by using a large sample which includes mostly blazars, but contains also some radio--galaxies. The jet power can be traced by…
Significant progress has been made in the last few years on understanding how supermassive black holes form and grow. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the spectral signatures of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) ranging from radio to hard…
They are weak, they are small, and they are often overlooked, but they are numerous and an ubiquitous sign of accreting black holes: compact radio cores and jets in low-power AGN. Here I summarize our work concerning these radio cores and…
Recent hydrodynamical simulations of radiatively inefficient black hole accretion flows with low viscosity have demonstrated that these flows differ significantly from those described by an advection-dominated model. The black hole flows…
The present paper reviews our current understanding of the AGN component in sub-mJy radio fields, as it results from the exploitation of multi-frequency information available in two deep extra-galactic radio fields: the ATESP 5 GHz sample…
Disks of gas accreting onto supermassive black holes are thought to power active galactic nuclei (AGN). Stars may form in gravitationally unstable regions of these disks, or may be captured from nuclear star clusters. Because of the dense…
X-ray reflection generates much of the spectral complexity in the X-ray spectra of AGN. It is argued that strong relativistic blurring of the reflection spectrum should commonly be expected from objects accreting at a high Eddington rate.…
Powerful radio galaxies at high redshift are highly useful in studies of early evolution of AGN-hosting galaxies because their observed optical and near infrared light are dominated by their stellar population rather than the nonthermal…
We investigate the 1.4 GHz radio properties of 92 nearby (z<0.05) ultra hard X-ray selected Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) from the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) sample. Through the ultra hard X-ray selection we minimise the biases…
These notes resulted from a series of lectures at the IAC winter school. They are designed to help students, especially those just starting in subject, to get hold of the fundamental tools used to study accretion powered sources. As such,…
Radiation emitted from an accretion disk around a massive black hole is a widely discussed model for the UV/soft X-ray excess emission observed in the spectra of many AGN. A self-consistent calculation of the structure and the emerging…
The influence of disc radiation capture upon black hole rotational evolution is negligible for radiatively inefficient discs. For the standard thin disc model it is a slight but potentially important effect leading to the equilibrium spin…
We have calculated the relativistic reflection component of the X-ray spectra of accretion disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Our calculations have shown that the spectra can be significantly modified by the motion of the accretion flow…
I consider how physical processes scale over eight orders of magnitude in black hole mass, from stellar masses in gamma-ray bursts (GRB) and black-hole X-ray binaries (BHXRB) to supermassive active galactic nuclei (AGN). Accretion rates…
We have selected a sample of X-ray emitting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in low-mass host galaxies (5e9-2e10 Msun) out to z~1. By comparing to AGNs in more massive hosts, we have found that the AGN spatial number density and the fraction…
We have studied the dependence of the AGN nuclear radio (1.4 GHz) luminosity on both the AGN 2-10 keV X-ray and the host-galaxy K-band luminosity. A complete sample of 1268 X-ray selected AGN (both type 1 and type 2) has been used, which is…
A stellar-mass black hole, embedded within the accretion disk of an active galactic nuclei (AGN), has the potential to accrete gas at a rate that can reach approximately $\sim 10^9$ times the Eddington limit. This study explores the…