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Related papers: A Survey Length for AGN Variability Studies

200 papers

We study the optical variability of a sample of candidate low-mass (dwarf ang Seyfert) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) using Zwicky Transient Facility g-band light curves. Our sample is compiled from broad-line AGNs in dwarf galaxies reported…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-04-11 Z. Franklin Wang , Colin J. Burke , Xin Liu , Yue Shen

We compiled a sample of 73 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with reverberation mapping (RM) observations from RM campaigns including our ongoing campaign of monitoring super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs). This sample covers…

In this study, we demonstrate some of the caveats in common statistical methods used for analysing astronomical variability timescales. We consider these issues specifically in the context of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and use a more…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-12 Sofia Kankkunen , Merja Tornikoski , Talvikki Hovatta

Double-peaked \oiii~profiles could potentially indicate kiloparsec-scale dual AGNs. We analyze long-term optical light curves of 35 type 1 AGNs with such features from our recent catalog in Zheng et al. (2025). These light curves are…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-08-04 Qi Zheng , Xingyv Zhu , Xueguang Zhang , Qirong Yuan

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

The study of quasar light curves poses two problems: inference of the power spectrum and interpolation of an irregularly sampled time series. A baseline approach to these tasks is to interpolate a time series with a Damped Random Walk (DRW)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-11-21 Egor Danilov , Aleksandra Ćiprijanović , Brian Nord

In a previous paper, we studied two statistical methods used to analyse the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs): the C and F statistics. Applying them to observed differential light-curves of 39 AGNs, we found that, even though the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-09-02 L. Zibecchi , I. Andruchow , S. A. Cellone , D. D. Carpintero

We investigate the relationship between AGN optical variability timescales, amplitudes, and supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses using homogeneous light curves from the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN). We fit a damped…

We present our statistical analysis of the connection between active galactic nuclei (AGN) variability and physical properties of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). We constructed optical light curves using data from the QUEST-La…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-09-19 P. Sánchez-Sáez , P. Lira , J. Mejía-Restrepo , L. C. Ho , P. Arévalo , M. Kim , R. Cartier , P. Coppi

We present the results of a study of different statistical methods currently used in the literature to analyse the (micro)variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from ground-based optical observations. In particular, we focus on the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-02-16 L. Zibecchi , I. Andruchow , S. A. Cellone , D. D. Carpintero , G. E. Romero , J. A. Combi

Motivated by upcoming photometric and spectroscopic surveys (Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), Manuakea Spectroscopic Explorer), we design the statistical proxies to measure the cadence effects on active…

The corona is an integral component of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) which can produce the X-ray emission. However, many of its physical properties and the mechanisms powering this emission remain a mystery. In this work, we study the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-07-08 Haiyun Zhang , Dahai Yan , Li Zhang , Niansheng Tang

The advent of new time domain surveys and the imminent increase in astronomical data expose the shortcomings in traditional time series analysis (such as power spectra analysis) in characterising the abundantly varied, complex and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-07-22 R. A. Phillipson , P. T. Boyd , A. P. Smale , M. S. Vogeley

A key feature of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is their variability across all wavelengths. Typically, AGN vary by a few tenths of a magnitude or more over periods lasting from hours to years. By contrast, extreme variability of AGN -- large…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-03-12 Summer A. J. McLaughlin , James R. Mullaney , Stuart P. Littlefair

Under the unified model for active galactic nuclei (AGNs), narrow-line (Type 2) AGNs are, in fact, broad-line (Type 1) AGNs but each with a heavily obscured accretion disk. We would therefore expect the optical continuum emission from Type…

The sampling strategy of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) make TESS light curves extremely valuable to investigate high cadence optical variability of AGN. However, because the TESS instrument was primarily designed for…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2023-10-16 Krista Lynne Smith , Lia Sartori

We present the first short time-scale ($\sim$hours to days) optical variability study of a large sample of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) observed with the Kepler/K2 mission. The sample contains 252 AGN observed over four campaigns with $\sim…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-03-14 E. Aranzana , E. Kording , P. Uttley , S. Scaringi , S. Bloemen

Literature on optical and infrared microvariability in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) reflects a diversity of statistical tests and strategies to detect tiny variations in the lightcurves of these sources. Comparison between the results…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2020-04-08 Jose A. de Diego

In this paper, standard accretion disk models of AGNs are tested using light curves of 26 objects well observed for reverberation mapping. Time scales of variations are estimated by the most common definition of the variability time scale…

Astrophysics · Physics 2014-01-10 H. T. Liu , J. M. Bai , X. H. Zhao , L. Ma