Related papers: Exploring Active Supermassive Black Holes at 100 M…
Super-Massive Black Holes reside in galactic nuclei, where they exhibit episodic bright flares due to accretion events. Taking into account relativistic effects, namely, the boosting and lensing of X-ray flares, we further examine the…
Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses between 100 to 10^5 M_\odot, represent the link between stellar mass black holes and the supermassive black holes that reside in galaxy centers. While IMBHs are crucial to our understanding…
Our knowledge of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their relation to their host galaxies is still limited, and there are only around 150 SMBHs that have their masses directly measured and confirmed. Better black hole mass scaling…
Isolated black holes in our Galaxy have eluded detection so far. We present here a comprehensive study on the detectability of isolated stellar-mass astrophysical black holes that accrete interstellar gas from molecular clouds in both the…
In the near future, wide field surveys will discover 1000's of new strongly lensed quasars, and these will be monitored with unprecedented cadence by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Many of these will undergo caustic-crossing…
The sub/millimeter wavelengths (86-690 GHz) very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) will provide $\sim5-40\ \mu$as angular resolution, $\sim10$ mJy baseline sensitivity, and $\sim 1\ \mu$as/yr proper motion precision, which can directly…
Observations of the centers of galaxies continue to evolve, and it is useful to take a fresh look at the constraints that exist on alternatives to supermassive black holes at their centers. We discuss constraints complementary to those of…
The sheer range of scales in the Universe makes it impossible to model all at once. It is necessary, therefore, when conducting numerical experiments, that we employ sub-resolution prescriptions that can represent the scales we are unable…
Radio observations with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) provide the highest resolution in astronomy. Combining earth-bound with space-based telescopes and advancing the observations to mm-wavelengths increases the resolution even…
The discoveries made over the past 20 years by Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys in conjunction with multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopic data available in the same fields have significantly changed the view of the supermassive black hole…
We have followed the evolution of multi-mass star clusters containing massive central black holes by N-body simulations on the GRAPE6 computers of Tokyo University. We find a strong cluster expansion and significant structural changes of…
High-resolution observations of the central few 100 pc of the galactic nuclear environments remain prohibitive for large statistical samples, which are crucial for tracing the links between central black hole formation, galaxy formation and…
One of the most intriguing scenarios proposed to explain how active galactic nuclei are triggered involves the existence of a supermassive binary black hole system in their cores. Here we present an observational evidence for the first…
We review the current state of dynamical modeling for galaxies in terms of being able to measure both the central black hole mass and stellar orbital structure. Both of these must be known adequately to measure either property. The current…
Dynamical mass measurements to date have allowed determinations of the mass M and the distance D of a number of nearby supermassive black holes. In the case of Sgr A*, these measurements are limited by a strong correlation between the mass…
The next generation of giant-segmented mirror telescopes ($>$ 20 m) will enable us to observe galactic nuclei at much higher angular resolution and sensitivity than ever before. These capabilities will introduce a revolutionary shift in our…
Globular clusters have been alternatively predicted to host intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) or nearly impossible to form and retain them in their centres. Over the last decade enough theoretical and observational evidence have…
This paper discusses the broad science case for obtaining milliarcsecond to microarcsecond astronomical imaging resolution in the soft to medium-energy X-ray band (~0.5 to ~8 keV). Astronomy across much of the electromagnetic spectrum has…
Understanding the processes that drive galaxy formation and shape the observed properties of galaxies is one of the most interesting and challenging frontier problems of modern astrophysics. We now know that the evolution of galaxies is…
Determining the black hole masses in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is of crucial importance to constrain the basic characteristics of their central engines and shed light on their growth and co-evolution with their host galaxies. While the…