Related papers: X-ray Reverberation Observational Modelling in Act…
It is widely accepted that X-ray emission in luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs) originates from hot corona. To prevent the corona from over-cooling by strong X-ray emission, steady heating to the corona is essential, for which the most…
The high-energy emission ($400$ keV $- 2$ MeV) of Cygnus X-1 --the most well-studied Galactic black hole-- was recently found to be strongly polarized. The origin of this radiation is still unknown. In this work, we suggest that it is the…
Relativistic reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of stellar-mass and supermassive black holes and originate from illumination of the inner part of the accretion disk by a hot corona. All the available relativistic…
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.…
The hot inner flow in black-hole X-ray binaries is not just a static corona rotating around the black hole, but it must be partially outflowing. We have developed a model, in which Comptonization takes place in this outflowing corona. We…
We discuss the application of simple relativistically-blurred X-ray reflection models to the determination of the spin and the inner radius of the disc in accreting black holes. Observationally, the nature of the corona is uncertain a…
Accreting black holes show characteristic 'reflection' features in their X-ray spectra, including the iron K$\alpha$ fluorescence line, which result from X-rays radiated by a compact central corona being reprocessed in the accretion disc…
We present the results of a continuum reverberation mapping study of the radio-quiet Seyfert 1 galaxy IRAS 09149-6206. The analysis was performed using X-ray, UV and optical observations made with the {\em Swift} telescope between January…
It has long been speculated that the nature of the hard X-ray corona may be an important second driver of black hole state transitions, in addition to the mass accretion rate through the disk. However, a clear physical picture of coronal…
We present X-ray timing and spectral analyses of simultaneous 150 ks Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and Suzaku X-ray observations of the Seyfert 1.5 galaxy NGC 4151. We disentangle the continuum emission, absorption, and…
The models that seek to explain the reflection spectrum in black hole binaries usually invoke a point-like primary source of hard X-rays. This source illuminates the accretion disk and gives rise to the discrete (lines) and…
X-ray reflection off the accretion disc surrounding a black hole, together with the associated broad iron K$\alpha$ line, has been widely used to constrain the innermost accretion-flow geometry and black hole spin. Some recent measurements…
The evolution of the inner accretion flow of a black hole X-ray binary (BHXRB) during the outburst is still a matter of active research. X-ray reverberation lags are powerful tools to constrain the disk-corona geometry. We present a study…
The long term X-ray spectral variability of ten active galactic nuclei (AGN) shows a positive spectral index-flux correlation for each object (Sobolewska & Papadakis 2009). An inner advection dominated accretion flow (ADAF) may connect to a…
We explore the accretion geometry in Arakelian 120 using intensive UV and X-ray monitoring from \textit{Swift}. The hard X-rays ($1-10$ keV) show large amplitude, fast (few-day) variability, so we expect reverberation from the disc to…
We outline a science case for next-generation wide-field spectroscopic surveys aimed at connecting the physics of the accretion disc and X-ray corona in active galactic nuclei (AGN) with the properties of their nebular regions and…
We present results of a 3-month combined X-ray/UV/optical monitoring campaign of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 6814. The object was monitored by Swift from June through August 2012 in the X-ray and UV bands and by the Liverpool Telescope from…
The radius-luminosity (R-L) relationship of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) established by the reverberation mapping (RM) observations has been widely used as a single-epoch black hole mass estimator in the research of large AGN samples.…
We construct a disk-corona model which accounts for the optical-to-X-ray spectral properties of Seyfert nuclei and QSOs. We study emission spectrum emerging from a vertical disk-corona structure composed of two-temperature plasma by solving…
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…