Related papers: Mapping the Inner Structure of Quasars with Time-D…
Black-hole spectroscopy is a powerful tool to probe the Kerr nature of astrophysical compact objects and their environment. The observation of multiple ringdown modes in gravitational waveforms could soon lead to high-precision…
We analyze the X-ray variability of 264 Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic quasars using the Chandra public archive. This data set consists of quasars with spectroscopic redshifts out to z~5 and covers rest-frame time scales up to Delta…
Black-hole spectroscopy aims to infer the fundamental properties of black holes by analysing the spectrum of gravitational waves emitted as they settle into equilibrium. These resonances, known as quasinormal modes (QNMs), decay rapidly,…
Modern X-ray observatories yield unique insight into the astrophysical time domain. Each X-ray photon can be assigned an arrival time, an energy and a sky position, yielding sensitive, energy-dependent light curves and enabling…
Flux variability is a remarkable property of black hole (BH) accreting systems, and a powerful tool to investigate the multi-scale structure of the accretion flow. The X-ray band is where some of the most rapid variations occur, pointing to…
We study the dependence of the number density and properties of quasars on the background galaxy density using the currently largest spectroscopic datasets of quasars and galaxies. We construct a galaxy number density field smoothed over…
Recently, GRAVITY onboard the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) first spatially resolved the structure of the quasar 3C 273 with an unprecedented resolution of $\sim 10\mu$as. A new method of measuring parallax distances has been…
We characterize the optical variability properties of eight lobe-dominated radio quasars (QSOs): B2 0709$+$37, FBQS J095206.3$+$235245, PG 1004$+$130, [HB89] 1156$+$631, [HB89] 1425$+$267, [HB89] 1503$+$691, [HB89] 1721$+$343, 4C $+$74.26,…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) should be an inevitable consequence of the hierarchical growth of massive galaxies through mergers, and the strongest sirens of gravitational waves (GWs) in the cosmos. And yet, their direct…
We analyze a sample of optical light curves for 100 quasars, 70 of which have black hole mass estimates. Our sample is the largest and broadest used yet for modeling quasar variability. The sources in our sample have z < 2.8 and 10^6 < M_BH…
The geometric distances of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are challenging to measure because of their exceptionally compact structure yet vast cosmic distances. A combination of spectroastrometry and reverberation mapping (SARM) of…
Spectral timing analyses based upon wavelet transforms provide a new means to study the variability of the X-ray emission from accreting systems, including AGN, stellar mass black holes and neutron stars, and can be used to trace the time…
We conducted long-term monitoring of the doubly imaged gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1001+5027 consisting of spectro-photometric observations separated by $\sim$120 days (time delay between both quasar images), as well as test and…
Time variability of astronomical sources provides crude information on their typical size and on the implied physical mechanisms. PKS1830-211 is a remarkable radio-bright lensed quasar with a foreground molecular absorber at z=0.89.…
X-ray reverberation echoes are assumed to be produced in the strongly distorted spacetime around accreting supermassive black holes. This signal allows us to spatially map the geometry of the inner accretion flow - a region which cannot yet…
In astronomy, we are witnessing an enormous increase in the number of source detections, precision, and diversity of measurements. Additionally, multi-epoch data is becoming the norm, making time-series analyses an important aspect of…
The search for periodic signals from blazars has become an actively pursued field of research in recent years. This is because periodic signals bring us information about the processes occurring near the innermost regions of blazars, which…
The X-ray emission from accreting black-holes and neutron stars features strong variability on sub-second time scales, with very complex and broad phenomenology. From high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations to rapidly changing X-ray…
Searches for gravitational wave echoes in the aftermath of mergers and/or formation of astrophysical black holes have recently opened a novel and surprising window into the quantum nature of their horizons. Similar to astro- and…
We present measurements of the spectral properties for a total of 526,265 quasars, out of which 63% have continuum S/N$>3$ pixel$^{-1}$, selected from the fourteenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-DR14) quasar catalog.…