Related papers: The Super-Massive Black Hole close environment in …
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are powered by the accretion of material onto a supermassive black hole (SMBH), and are among the most luminous objects in the Universe. However, the huge radiative power of most AGN cannot be seen directly, as…
The vast majority of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the local universe exhibit levels of activity much lower than those expected from gas supplying rates onto the galactic nuclei, and only a small fraction of silent SMBHs can turn into…
Accretion onto supermassive black holes powers the most luminous persistent sources in the Universe, the so-called active galactic nuclei, whose emission is characterized by two distinct spectral components: thermal optical/ultraviolet…
Most of the action in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) occurs within a few tens of gravitational radii from the supermassive black hole, where matter in the accretion disk may lose up to almost half of its energy with a copious production of…
Jets of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are established emitters of very high energy (VHE; >100 GeV) gamma-rays. VHE radiation is also expected to be emitted from the vicinity of super-massive black holes (SMBH), irrespective of their activity…
We examine unresolved nuclear X-ray sources in 57 brightest cluster galaxies to study the relationship between nuclear X-ray emission and accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The majority of the clusters in our sample have…
The cosmic X-ray background (CXB), which peaks at an energy of ~30 keV, is produced primarily by emission from accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The CXB therefore serves as a constraint on the integrated SMBH growth in the…
Our X-ray study of the nuclear activity in a new sample of six quiescent early-type galaxies, and in a larger sample from the literature, confirmed (Soria et al., Paper I) that the Bondi accretion rate of diffuse hot gas is not a good…
The highly energetic outflows from Active Galactic Nuclei detected in X-rays are one of the most powerful mechanisms by which the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) interacts with the host galaxy. The last two decades of high resolution…
The masses of 68 supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in nearby (z<0.15) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected by the INTEGRAL observatory in the hard X-ray energy band (17-60 keV) outside the Galactic plane (|b| > 5 degrees) have been…
A supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the core of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) provides room for the elusive ultra-light scalar particles (ULSP) to be produced through a phenomenon called \textit{superradiance}. This phenomenon produces a…
Powering the 10^62 erg nuclear outburst in the MS0735.6+7421 cluster central galaxy by accretion implies that its supermassive black hole (SMBH) grew by ~6x10^8 solar masses over the past 100 Myr. We place upper limits on the amount of cold…
The colossal power output of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is believed to be fueled by the accretion of matter onto a supermassive black hole. This central accreting region of AGN has hitherto been spatially unresolved and its structure…
The cosmic history of supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth is important for understanding galaxy evolution, reionization and the physics of accretion. Recent NuSTAR, Swift-BAT and \textit{Chandra} hard X-ray surveys have provided new…
In the last decade, a combination of high sensitivity, high spatial resolution observations and of coordinated multi-wavelength surveys has revolutionized our view of extra-galactic black hole (BH) astrophysics. We now know that…
The cores of most galaxies are thought to harbour supermassive black holes, which power galactic nuclei by converting the gravitational energy of accreting matter into radiation (ref 1). Sagittarius A*, the compact source of radio, infrared…
We use the integrated spectrum of the X-ray background and quasars Spectral Energy Distribution to derive the contribution of quasars to the energy output of the Universe. We find a lower limit for the energy from accretion onto black holes…
The material surrounding accreting supermassive black holes connects the active galactic nucleus (AGN) with its host galaxy and, besides being responsible for feeding the black hole, provides important information on the feedback that…
Understanding the physics and geometry of accretion and ejection around super massive black holes (SMBHs) is important to understand the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and therefore of the large scale structures of the Universe.…
The physics of active super massive black holes (BHs) is governed by their mass (M_BH), spin (a*) and accretion rate ($\dot{M}$). This work is the first in a series of papers with the aim of testing how these parameters determine the…