Related papers: X-ray illuminated accretion discs and quasar micro…
Thermal reverberation in accretion discs of active galactic nuclei is thought to be the reason of the continuum UV/optical time lags seen in these sources. Recently, we studied thermal reverberation of a standard Novikov-Thorne accretion…
In this paper, we present an updated version of our model (KYNXiltr) which considers thermal reverberation of a standard Novikov-Thorne accretion disc illuminated by an X-ray point-like source. Previously, the model considered only two…
The primary X-ray emission from AGN, described by a power law, irradiates the accretion disc producing reflection features in the spectrum. The reflection features arising from the inner regions of the disc can be significantly modified by…
(Abridged) Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies have low mass black holes and mass accretion rates close to (or exceeding) Eddington, so a standard blackbody accretion disc should peak in the EUV. However, the lack of true absorption…
We present a novel method to measure the accretion rate of radio emitting X-ray binaries (XRBs) and active galactic nuclei (AGN) independently of the X-ray luminosity. The radio emission of the jet is used as a tracer for the accretion rate…
The corona is a key component of most luminous accreting black holes, carrying 5 - 30 % of the power and in non-jetted Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), creating all the X-ray emission above $\simeq 1-2$ keV. Its emission illuminates the inner…
Over the last few years X-ray observations of broad-line radio galaxies (BLRGs) by ASCA, RXTE and BeppoSAX have shown that these objects seem to exhibit weaker X-ray reflection features (such as the iron K\alpha line) than radio-quiet…
In the X-ray spectra of AGNs, a noticeable excess of soft X-rays is typically detected beyond the extrapolation of the power-law trend observed between 2-10 keV. In the scenario of warm Comptonization, observations propose a warm corona…
We discuss the expected X-ray spectral and variability properties of black hole accretion discs at high luminosity, under the hypothesis that radiation pressure dominated discs are subject to violent clumping instabilities and, as a result,…
Getting insights on the shape and nature of the ionizing continuum in astronomical objects is often done via indirect methods as high energy photons are absorbed by our Galaxy. This work explores the ionization continuum of active galactic…
After reviewing the basic physics of X-ray reflection in AGN, we present three case studies which illustrate the current state of X-ray reflection studies. For the low-luminosity AGN NGC4258, we find that the iron line is much narrower than…
We study the differences in X-ray properties of luminous radio galaxies and their radio-quiet counterparts. In order to avoid biases associated with the dependence of X-ray properties on the black hole mass and Eddington ratio, the…
Hardness-intensity diagrams (HIDs) have been used with great success to study the accretion states and their connection to radio jets in X-ray binaries (XRBs). The analogy between XRBs and active galactic nuclei (AGN) suggests that similar…
We study in detail the properties of the accreting corona model for active galactic nuclei and galactic black holes. In this model the fraction of the energy liberated in the corona at a given radius is calculated from the global parameters…
We discuss properties of thermal and hybrid (thermal/non-thermal) electron-positron plasmas in the pair and energy equilibria. Various accretion disc-corona models, recently proposed to explain properties of galactic as well as…
Accreting black holes show characteristic 'reflection' features in their X-ray spectra, including the iron K$\alpha$ fluorescence line, which result from X-rays radiated by a compact central corona being reprocessed in the accretion disc…
Despite their factor of ~10^8 difference in black hole mass, several lines of evidence suggest possible similarities between black hole accretion flows in active galactic nuclei (AGN) and Galactic X-ray binaries. However, it is still…
The UV-X continuum, the X-ray spectral features, and the variability in these bands provide powerful tools for studying the innermost regions of AGNs from which we gain an insight into the accretion process. In this chapter the discussion…
The supermassive black holes ($M_{\rm BH} \sim 10^{6}$$-$$10^{10}~M_\odot$) that power luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs), i.e., quasars, generally show a correlation between thermal disk emission in the ultraviolet (UV) and coronal…
We present X-ray and multiwavelength studies of a sample of eight high-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with disc-like H\beta emission-line profiles selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. These sources have…