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Related papers: AGN Variability Analysis Handbook

200 papers

A long-term variability study spanning a range of black hole mass systems, from microquasars hosting stellar-mass black holes to active galactic nuclei (AGNs) harboring supermassive black holes, provides new insights into the physics of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-20 Yongyun Chen , Qiusheng Gu , Junhui Fan , Dingrong Xiong , Xiaoling Yu , Xiaogu Zhong , Xiaotong Guo

We conducted an analysis of gamma-ray variability in a large sample of jetted active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by utilizing archival Fermi-LAT light curves and applying damped random walk modeling to obtain variability amplitude. Our primary…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-21 Yongyun Chen , Qiusheng Gu , Junhui Fan , Dingrong Xiong , Xiaoling Yu , Xiaogu Zhong , Xiaotong Guo , Nan Ding

A simple, model-independent method to quantify the stochastic variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is the structure function (SF) analysis. If the SF for the timescales shorter than the decorrelation timescale $\tau$ is a single…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-02-08 Szymon Kozłowski

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) vary in their brightness across all wavelengths. Moreover, longer wavelength ultraviolet - optical continuum light curves appear to be delayed with respect to shorter wavelength light curves. A simple way to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-01-27 David Starkey , Keith Horne , Carolin Villforth

Machine-learning (ML) algorithms will play a crucial role in studying the large datasets delivered by new facilities over the next decade and beyond. Here, we investigate the capabilities and limits of such methods in finding galaxies with…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2019-08-22 Andreas L. Faisst , Abhishek Prakash , Peter L. Capak , Bomee Lee

LSST is expected to yield ~10^7 light curves over the course of its mission, which will require a concerted effort in automated classification. Stochastic processes provide one means of quantitatively describing variability with the…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2017-04-26 J. C. Zinn , C. S. Kochanek , S. Kozłowski , A. Udalski , M. K. Szymański , I. Soszyński , Ł. Wyrzykowski , K. Ulaczyk , R. Poleski , P. Pietrukowicz , J. Skowron , P. Mróz , M. Pawlak

The power spectral density (PSD) represents a key property quantifying the stochastic or random noise type fluctuations in variable sources like Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). In recent years, estimates of the PSD have been refined by…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-10-05 Nachiketa Chakraborty , Frank M. Rieger

Context. A defining characteristic of active galactic nuclei (AGN) that distinguishes them from other astronomical sources is their stochastic variability, which is observable across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Upcoming optical…

We study the statistical properties of the Normalized Excess Variance of variability process characterized by a red-noise power spectral density (PSD), as the case of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). We perform Monte Carlo simulations of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-04 V. Allevato , M. Paolillo , I. Papadakis , C. Pinto

Continuum and emission-line variability of active galactic nuclei provides a powerful probe of microarcsecond scale structures in the central regions of these sources. In this contribution, we review basic concepts and methodologies used in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-11-03 Bradley M. Peterson

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) exhibit stochastic optical variability, commonly characterized by a damped random walk. The damping timescale is of particular interest because it is related to fundamental properties of the central black hole,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-09-29 Ruisong Xia , Zhen-Yi Cai , Yongquan Xue , Xian-Liang Lu , Guowei Ren , Shuying Zhou , Mouyuan Sun , Shifu Zhu , Zhen-Bo Su , Hao Liu

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are believed to be powered by accretion of matter onto a supermassive black hole. A fundamental ingredient in shaping our understanding of AGN is their variability across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-09-08 Maurizio Paolillo , Iossif Papadakis

Adopting the hypothesis that the nonthermal emission of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is primarily due to the acceleration of protons, we construct a simple model in which the interplay of acceleration and losses can be studied together with…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-02-03 A. Mastichiadis J. G. Kirk

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-03-26 Suyeon Son , Minjin Kim , Luis C. Ho

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have long been observed to "twinkle" (i.e., their brightness varies with time) on timescales from days to years in the UV/optical bands. Such AGN UV/optical variability is essential for probing the physics of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-03-24 Mouyuan Sun , Yongquan Xue , W. N. Brandt , Wei-Min Gu , Jonathan R. Trump , Zhenyi Cai , Zhicheng He , Da-bin Lin , Tong Liu , Junxian Wang

The classic classification scheme for Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) was recently challenged by the discovery of the so-called changing-state (changing-look) AGNs (CSAGNs). The physical mechanism behind this phenomenon is still a matter of…

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) exhibit variability in their luminosities with timescales that correlate with the mass of the black hole at the centre of the AGN. Presently, the empirical correlation lacks sufficient precision to confidently…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-12-22 Adrien Hélias , Sarah C. Gallagher , Pauline Barmby

Graph State Space Models (SSMs) have recently been introduced to enhance Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) in modeling long-range interactions. Despite their success, existing methods either compromise on permutation equivariance or limit their…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-23 Moshe Eliasof , Alessio Gravina , Andrea Ceni , Claudio Gallicchio , Davide Bacciu , Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

Accreting compact objects show variations in source flux over a broad range of timescales and in all wavebands. The light curves typically show a lognormal distribution of flux and a linear relation between flux and rms. It has been…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-02-20 William Alston

Context: Variations in the mass accretion rate appear to be responsible for the rapid transitions in spectral type that are observed in increasingly more active galactic nuclei (AGNs). These objects are now labeled "changing-look" AGNs and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-04-15 F. Marin , D. Hutsemékers