Related papers: Iron line reverberation mapping in Ghasemi-Nodehi-…
The recent detection of X-ray reverberation lags, especially in the Fe K\alpha\ line region, around Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) has opened up the possibility of studying the time-resolved response (reflection) of hard X-rays from the…
An extreme Kerr black hole (BH) surrounded by a precessing disk is invoked to explain the light curves of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) based on the coexistence of the Blandford-Znajek (BZ) and the magnetic coupling (MC) processes. The overall…
Negatively charged boron vacancy (VB-) defects in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) are promising for nanoscale-proximity quantum sensing. To evaluate their performance, it is important to characterize the spin coherence times T2* and T2. In…
We present angle-dependent, broad-band intensity spectra from accretion disks around black holes of 10 M$_\odot$. In our computations disks are assumed to be slim, which means that the radial advection is taken into account while computing…
Extending a computation which appeared recently in hep-th/0301173, we compute the transmission and reflection coefficients for massless uncharged scalars and gravitational waves scattered by d>=4 Schwarzschild or d=4 Reissner-Nordstrom…
The usage of the radius-luminosity (R-L) relation for the determination of black hole masses across the cosmic history as well as its application for cosmological studies motivates us to analyze its scatter, which has recently increased…
While iron emission lines are well studied in black hole systems, both in X-ray binaries and Active Galactic Nuclei, there has been less of a focus on these lines in neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). However, recent observations…
Accreting stellar-mass black holes often show a `Type-C' quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) in their X-ray flux, and an iron emission line in their X-ray spectrum. The iron line is generated through continuum photons reflecting off the…
I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black…
To understand the mass distribution and co-evolution of supermassive black holes with their host galaxy, it is crucial to measure the black hole mass of AGN. Reverberation mapping is a unique tool to estimate the black hole masses in AGN.…
Under very general assumptions on the accretion flow geometry, images of a black hole illuminated by electromagnetic radiation display a sequence of photon rings (demagnified and rotated copies of the direct image) which asymptotically…
Under the assumption that astrophysical black hole candidates are the Kerr black holes of general relativity, the continuum-fitting method and the analysis of the K$\alpha$ iron line are today the only available techniques capable of…
The symmetry and geometry of the Fermi surface play an essential role in governing the transport properties of a metallic system. A Fermi surface with reduced symmetry is intimately tied to unusual transport properties such as anomalous…
One of the hallmarks of active galactic nuclei are that they are highly variable with time. In watching the spectra vary it has been observed that the emission-lines often appear to "reverberate" -- that is they vary in response to…
It is well known that reverberation mapping of active galactic nuclei (AGN) reveals a relationship between AGN luminosity and the size of the broad-line region, and that use of this relationship, combined with the Doppler width of the broad…
The profile of the fluorescent iron line from black hole accretion disks is a powerful diagnostic of black hole properties, such as spin and inclination. The state-of-the-art, however, considers an accretion disk whose angular momentum is…
Black Hole Mass (M_BH) estimation in quasars, especially at high redshift, involves use of single epoch spectra with s/n and resolution that permit accurate measurement of the width of a broad line assumed to be a reliable virial estimator.…
Radial velocity monitoring has revealed the presence of moving broad emission lines in some quasars, potentially indicating the presence of a sub-parsec binary system. Phase-referenced, near-infrared interferometric observations could map…
We demonstrate that the `smoke' of limited instrumental sensitivity smears out structure in gamma-ray burst (GRB) pulse light curves, giving each a triple-peaked appearance at moderate signal-to-noise and a simple monotonic appearance at…
The first reverberation lag from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole was recently detected in the NLS1 galaxy 1H0707-495. We interpreted the lag as being due to reflection from matter close to the black hole, within a few…