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We use the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 Survey (Pan-STARRS1, PS1) data to extend the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 quasar light curves. Combining PS1 and SDSS light curves provides a 15 yr baseline for…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-02-10 Krzysztof Suberlak , Željko Ivezić , Chelsea MacLeod

A damped random walk is a stochastic process, defined by an exponential covariance matrix that behaves as a random walk for short time scales and asymptotically achieves a finite variability amplitude at long time scales. Over the last few…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-18 Zeljko Ivezic , Chelsea L. MacLeod

The scaling laws reveal the underlying structural similarities shared by astrophysical systems across vastly different scales. In black hole accretion systems, the scaling relations between the characteristic damping timescales (CDTs) of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-12-15 Haoyang Zhang , Shenbang Yang , Li Zhang , Benzhong Dai

One of the most important features in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is the variability of their emission. Variability has been discovered at X-ray, UV, and radio frequencies on time scales from hours to years. Among the AGN family and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-15 L. Hernández-García , O. González-Martín , I. Márquez , J. Masegosa

Over the past decade, a significant amount of effort has been put into investigating the ultraviolet (UV) and optical variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Comprehensive studies of intensive multi-wavelength monitoring and surveys…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-09-04 M. Papoutsis , I. E. Papadakis , C. Panagiotou , E. Kammoun , M. Dovciak

This paper sets out to measure the timescale of quasar variability with a view to new understanding of the size of accretion discs in active galactic nuclei. Previous attempts to measure such timescales have been based on sparsely sampled…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 M. R. S. Hawkins

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-03-17 E. S. Kammoun , I. E. Papadakis , M. Dovciak

Context: Quasar variability can potentially unlock crucial insights into the accretion process. Understanding how this variability is influenced by wavelength is crucial for validating and refining quasar variability models. Aims: This…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-03-19 P. Patel , P. Lira , P. Arévalo , Mouyuan Sun , S. Bernal , M. L. Martínez-Aldama

The 4 Ms Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S) and other deep X-ray surveys have been highly effective at selecting active galactic nuclei (AGN). However, cosmologically distant low-luminosity AGN (LLAGN) have remained a challenge to identify…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-03 M. Young , W. N. Brandt , Y. Q. Xue , M. Paolillo , D. M. Alexander , F. E. Bauer , B. D. Lehmer , B. Luo , O. Shemmer , D. P. Schneider , C. Vignali

Context. Continuum time delays from accretion disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN) has been proposed long time ago as a tool for measuring distances to the monitored sources. However, the method faces serious problems as a number of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-03-01 Vikram Kumar Jaiswal , Raj Prince , Swayamtrupta Panda , Bożena Czerny

AGN exhibit rapid, high amplitude stochastic flux variations across the entire electromagnetic spectrum on timescales ranging from hours to years. The cause of this variability is poorly understood. We present a Green's Function-based…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-07-26 Vishal P. Kasliwal , Michael S. Vogeley , Gordon T. Richards

We model the time variability of ~9,000 spectroscopically confirmed quasars in SDSS Stripe 82 as a damped random walk. Using 2.7 million photometric measurements collected over 10 years, we confirm the results of Kelly et al. (2009) and…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2010-09-07 C. L. MacLeod , Ž. Ivezić , C. S. Kochanek , S. Kozłowski , B. C. Kelly , E. Bullock , A. Kimball , B. Sesar , D. Westman , K. Brooks , R. Gibson , A. C. Becker , W. H. de Vries

Intensive broadband reverberation mapping campaigns have shown that AGN variability is significantly more complex than expected from disc reverberation of the variable X-ray illumination. The UV/optical variability is highly correlated and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-05-02 Scott Hagen , Chris Done , Rick Edelson

Over the next ten years, the Vera C.\ Rubin Observatory (VRO) will observe $\sim$10 million active galactic nuclei (AGN) with a regular and high cadence. During this time, the intensities of most of these AGN will fluctuate stochastically.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-12-20 Cyril Creque-Sarbinowski , Marc Kamionkowski , Bei Zhou

Reverberation mapping is one of the main techniques used to study active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks. Traditional continuum reverberation mapping uses short lags between variability in different wavelength AGN light curves on the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-15 Amy Secunda , Sebastian Wagner-Carena , Helen Qu , Shirley Ho

The interacting binary white dwarf (AM CVn) systems HM Cnc and V407 have orbital periods of 5.4 min and 9.5 min, respectively. The two systems are characterized by an "on/off" behaviour in the X-ray light curve, and optical light curves…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Matt A. Wood

We report the detection of a long-timescale negative lag, where the blue bands lag the red bands, in the nearby Seyfert 1 galaxy Fairall 9. Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) light curves show variability over a wide range of timescales. By…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-08-09 Philippe Z. Yao , Amy Secunda , Yan-Fei Jiang , Jenny E. Greene , Ashley Villar

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are known to exhibit optical/UV variability and most of them can be well modeled by the damped random walks. Physical processes that are not related to the accretion disk, such as tidal disruption events (TDE)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-04-17 Zhiyuan Zheng , Yong Shi , Shuowen Jin , H. Dannerbauer , Qiusheng Gu , Xin Li , Xiaoling Yu

Swift intensive accretion disk reverberation mapping of four AGN yielded light curves sampled $\sim$200-350 times in 0.3-10 keV X-ray and six UV/optical bands. Uniform reduction and cross-correlation analysis of these datasets yields three…

We present optical light curves from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) for the archetypical dwarf active galactic nucleus (AGN) in the nearby galaxy NGC 4395 hosting a $\sim 10^5\,M_\odot$ supermassive black hole (SMBH).…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-08-25 Colin J. Burke , Yue Shen , Yu-Ching Chen , Simone Scaringi , Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere , Xin Liu , Qian Yang