Related papers: Delayed emission from luminous blue optical transi…
Massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) are a natural byproduct of galaxy mergers. Previous studies have shown that flares from stellar tidal disruption events (TDEs) are modified by the presence of a secondary perturber, causing interruptions…
Accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) can exhibit variable emission across the electromagnetic spectrum and over a broad range of timescales. The variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the ultraviolet and optical is usually at…
Observational evidence suggests that the majority of stars may have been born in stellar clusters or associations. Within these dense environments, dynamical interactions lead to high rates of close stellar encounters. A variety of recent…
Sixteen years of observations of black hole transients with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, complemented by other X-ray observatories and ground-based optical/infrared/radio telescopes have given us a clear view of the complex…
Radiation emitted near a black hole reaches the observer by multiple paths; and when this radiation varies in time, the time-delays between the various paths generate a "blinking" effect in the observed light curve L(t) or its…
We present a search for luminous, long-duration ambiguous nuclear transients (ANTs) similar to the unprecedented discovery of the extreme, ambiguous event AT2021lwx with a $>150$\,d rise time and luminosity $10^{45.7}$\,erg\,s$^{-1}$. We…
The outbursts of black hole X-ray transients can be understood as caused by a limit cycle instability in the accretion disk, similar to dwarf nova outbursts. For adequately low mass overflow rates from the companion star long outburst…
The bright transient AT2018cow has been unlike any other known type of transient. Its high brightness, rapid rise and decay and initially nearly featureless spectrum are unprecedented and difficult to explain using models for similar burst…
Long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which signify the end-life collapsing of very massive stars, are produced by extremely relativistic jets colliding into circumstellar medium. Huge energy is released both in the first few seconds, namely the…
Aims: Flip-flops are top-hat-like X-ray flux variations which occur in some transient accreting black hole binary systems and feature simultaneous changes in the spectral hardness and the Power Density Spectrum (PDS). They occur at a…
The phenomenology of a subclass of High Mass X-ray Binaries hosting a blue supergiant companion, the so-called Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs), is reviewed. Their number is growing, mainly thanks to the discoveries performed by the…
I discuss the possibility that accreting supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries with sub-parsec separations produce periodically recurring luminous outbursts that interrupt periods of relative quiescence. This hypothesis is motivated by…
We summarize the quiescent X-ray observations of transient low-mass X-ray binaries. These observations show that, in quiescence, binaries containing black holes are fainter than those containing neutron stars. This has triggered a number of…
The recent detection of possible neutrino emission from the blazar TXS 0506+056 was the first high-energy neutrino associated with an astrophysical source, making this special type of active galaxies promising neutrino emitters. The fact…
Radio pulsars scintillate because their emission travels through the ionized interstellar medium via multiple paths, which interfere with each other. It has long been realized that the scattering screens responsible for the scintillation…
Supermassive black holes disrupt passing stars, producing outbursts called tidal disruption events (TDEs). TDEs have recently gained attention due to their unique dynamics and emission processes, which are still not fully understood.…
Binaries containing a compact object orbiting a supermassive black hole are thought to be precursors of gravitational wave events, but their identification has been extremely challenging. Here, we report quasi-periodic variability in X-ray…
Flares produced following the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes can reveal the properties of the otherwise dormant majority of black holes and the physics of accretion. In the past decade, a class of optical-ultraviolet…
The BL Lacertae OJ 287 is a supermassive black holes binary (SMBHB) system with complex physics of its irregular flares. During 2016 October -- 2017 April period, a surprising outburst in the X-ray, UV and optical bands was detected, while…
INTEGRAL monitoring of the Galactic Plane is revealing a growing number of recurrent X-ray transients, characterised by short outbursts with very fast rise times (~ tens of minutes) and typical durations of a few hours. A substantial…