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The characteristic timescale at which the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) turns from red noise to white noise can probe the accretion physics around supermassive black holes (SMBHs). A number of works have studied the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-09-17 Guowei Ren , Shuying Zhou , Mouyuan Sun , Yongquan Xue

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGN) exhibit spectroscopic and photometric changes on timescales of months to years, making them powerful laboratories for studying accretion variability onto supermassive black holes. Motivated by…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-20 Mariangella Camus , Swayamtrupta Panda

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) exhibit variability across the entire electromagnetic spectrum with distinct flaring episodes at different frequencies. The high sensitivity and nearly uniform sky coverage of the Large Area Telescope on board…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-03-02 Filippo D'Ammando

Determining the frequency and duration of changing--look (CL) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) phenomena, where the optical broad emission lines appear or disappear, is crucial to understand the evolution of the accretion flow around…

Aperiodic optical variability is a common property of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), though its physical origin is still open to question. To study the origin of the optical -- ultraviolet variability in AGN, we compare light curves of two…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 T. Kawaguchi , S. Mineshige , M. Umemura , E. L. Turner

Since their discovery more than 60 years ago, accreting supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) were recognized as highly variable sources, requiring an extremely compact, dynamic environment. Their variability traces to…

We have used Kepler photometry to characterize variability in four radio-loud active galactic nuclei (three quasars and one object tentatively identified as a Seyfert 1.5 galaxy) on timescales from minutes to months, comparable to the light…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-15 Ann E. Wehrle , Paul J. Wiita , Stephen C. Unwin , Paolo Di Lorenzo , Mitchell Revalski , Daniel Silano , Dan Sprague

Selection of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the infrared allows the discovery of AGN whose optical emission is extinguished by dust. In this paper, we use the Spitzer Space Telescope First Look Survey (FLS) to assess what fraction of AGN…

Quasars shine brightly due to the liberation of gravitational energy as matter falls onto a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy. Variations in the radiation received from active galactic nuclei (AGN) are studied at all…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 J. Dennett-Thorpe , A. G. de Bruyn

Quasars are variable on timescales from days to years in UV/optical, and generally appear bluer while they brighten. The physics behind the variations in fluxes and colors remains unclear. Using SDSS g and r band photometric monitoring data…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-22 Yu-Han Sun , Jun-Xian Wang , Xiao-Yang Chen , Zhen-Ya Zheng

We quantify quasar color-variability using an unprecedented variability database - ugriz photometry of 9093 quasars from SDSS Stripe 82, observed over 8 years at ~60 epochs each. We confirm previous reports that quasars become bluer when…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-30 Kasper B. Schmidt , Hans-Walter Rix , Joseph C. Shields , Matthias Knecht , David W. Hogg , Dan Maoz , Jo Bovy

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CLAGNs) are known to change their spectral type between 1 and 2 (changing-state) or change their absorption between Compton-thick and Compton-thin (changing-obscuration) on timescales of years or less.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-01-17 Bing Lyu , Zhen Yan , Xue-bing Wu , Qingwen Wu , Wenfei Yu , Hao Liu

Quasars exhibit stochastic variability across wavelengths, typically well described by a Damped Random Walk (DRW). Occasionally, however, they undergo extreme luminosity changes--known as flares--that represent significant departures from…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-15 Atal Agrawal

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) significantly influence galaxy evolution. Specific sources such as obscured AGNs, especially Type II quasars (QSO2), still remain understudied. We characterise 366 QSO2 candidates in the redshift desert (median…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-04-09 P. A. C. Cunha , A. Humphrey , J. Brinchmann , A. Paulino-Afonso , L. Bisigello , M. Bolzonella , D. Vaz

Graham et al. found a sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars from the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS) that have long-term periodic variations in optical continuum, the nature of the periodicity remains uncertain. We…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-04-20 Kai-Xing Lu , Yan-Rong Li , Shao-Lan Bi , Jian-Min Wang

Blazars, a type of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with relativistic jets pointed at the observer, exhibit flux variability across the electromagnetic spectrum due to particle acceleration in their jets. Power spectral density (PSD) studies…

We argue that the `changing look' AGN recently reported by LaMassa et al. could be a luminous flare produced by the tidal disruption of a super-solar mass star passing just a few gravitational radii outside the event horizon of a $\sim 10^8…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-08-06 A. Merloni , T. Dwelly , M. Salvato , A. Georgakakis , J. Greiner , M. Krumpe , K. Nandra , G. Ponti , A. Rau

The origin of the optical flux variability in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is largely unknown. Previous studies have correlated features of the variability structure function (SF) with AGN properties, though they mostly involved…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-06 Ashley Hai Tung Tan , Christian Wolf , Neelesh Amrutha , Christopher A. Onken , John L. Tonry , Rachel Webster

We present a model that explains some extreme variability phenomena observed in active galactic nuclei (AGN). In this model, an orbiting companion interacts with the accretion disk surrounding the central supermassive black hole (SMBH).…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-06-26 Sierra A. Dodd , Xiaoshan Huang , Shane W. Davis , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

We examine the continuum variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by analyzing the multi-epoch spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. To achieve this, we utilized approximately 2 million spectroscopy pairwise combinations…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-11-13 Minjin Kim , Suyeon Son , Luis C. Ho