Related papers: Variability in Quasar Light Curves: using quasars …
We study the optical light curves - primarily probing the variable emission from the accretion disk - of ~ 900 extreme variability quasars (EVQs, with maximum flux variations more than 1 mag) over an observed-frame baseline of ~ 16 years…
Several recent observations using standard rulers and standard candles now suggest, either individually or in combination, that the Universe is close to flat, i.e. that the curvature radius is about as large as the horizon radius (\sim…
The stochastic photometric variability of quasars is known to follow a random-walk phenomenology on emission timescales of months to years. Some high-cadence restframe optical monitoring in the past has hinted at a suppression of…
The spectral indexes distribution of a quasar sample is derived from a far-UV survey. A red average spectrum is found which comes in support of significant evolution of the QSO spectral energy distribution (SED) since $z\approx2.5$.
By comparing the results of numerical microlensing simulations to the observed long-term variability of quasars, strong upper limits on the cosmological density of compact objects in the mass range 0.01 to 0.0001 solar masses may be…
We investigate the luminosity and redshift dependence of the quasar continuum by means of composite spectrum using a large non-BAL radio-quiet quasar sample drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Quasar continuum slopes in the UV-Opt band…
We have investigated the spatial distribution of quasars and its relationship with redshift by using the two-point correlation function, the variance of cell counts and the conditional density as a function of redshift. By comparing our…
For many years some astronomers have continued to argue, using redshift periodicities and quasar-galaxy associations, that quasars may be closer than their redshifts imply. Here, for the first time using raw radio data, I re-examine this…
The Hubble diagram of quasars, as candidates to ``standardizable" candles, has been used to measure the expansion history of the Universe at late times, up to very high redshifts ($z \sim 7$). It has been shown that this history, as…
Quasars provide our farthest-reaching view of the Universe. The Sloan Survey now contains over 100,000 quasar candidates. A careful look at the angular distribution of quasar spectra shows a surprising "bullseye" pattern on the sky toward…
When a flux-limited quasar sample is observed at later times, there will be more dimmed quasars than brightened ones, due to a selection bias induced at the time of sample selection. Quasars are continuously varying and there are more…
We present results from a monitoring program of 42 quasars from the Palomar Green sample. The objects were observed for 7 years at the Wise Observatory, as part of a long term effort to monitor AGN of various types. This is the most…
We use numerical simulations to test a broad range of plausible observational strategies designed to measure the time delay between the images of gravitationally lensed quasars. Artificial quasar light curves are created along with…
X-ray observations provide a unique probe of the accretion disk corona of supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In this paper, we present a uniform \emph{Chandra} X-ray data analysis of a sample of 152 $z\geq4.5$ quasars. We firmly detect 46…
There are two possible causes of variability in gravitationally lensed quasars: intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar and ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced…
We develop a method for separating quasars from other variable point sources using SDSS Stripe 82 light curve data for ~10,000 variable objects. To statistically describe quasar variability, we use a damped random walk model parametrized by…
We use 62,185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR5 sample and standard virial mass scaling laws based on the widths of H beta, Mg II, and C IV lines and adjacent continuum luminosities to explore the maximum mass of quasars as a…
We use the X-ray luminosity relation of radio-loud quasars (RLQs) to measure these luminosity distances as well as estimate cosmological parameters. We adopt four parametric models of X-ray luminosity to test luminosity correlation for RLQs…
The concordance (LambdaCDM) model reproduces the main current cosmological observations assuming the validity of general relativity at all scales and epochs, the presence of cold dark matter, and of a cosmological constant, equivalent to a…
With the availability of large-scale surveys like Kepler and TESS, there is a pressing need for automated methods to classify light curves according to known classes of variable stars. We introduce a new algorithm for classifying light…