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Related papers: The AGN Optical Variability Fundamental Plane

200 papers

We present our statistical analysis of the connection between active galactic nuclei (AGN) variability and physical properties of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). We constructed optical light curves using data from the QUEST-La…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-09-19 P. Sánchez-Sáez , P. Lira , J. Mejía-Restrepo , L. C. Ho , P. Arévalo , M. Kim , R. Cartier , P. Coppi

We compiled a sample of 73 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with reverberation mapping (RM) observations from RM campaigns including our ongoing campaign of monitoring super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs). This sample covers…

Simulations predict that supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) will exhibit periodic brightness variations that may exceed the stochastic variability intrinsic to active galactic nuclei (AGN). In this paper, we simulate SMBHBs with…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-23 Sebastian Banaszak , Caitlin Witt , Adam Miller

We study the optical variability of a sample of candidate low-mass (dwarf ang Seyfert) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) using Zwicky Transient Facility g-band light curves. Our sample is compiled from broad-line AGNs in dwarf galaxies reported…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-04-11 Z. Franklin Wang , Colin J. Burke , Xin Liu , Yue Shen

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

We study the optical variability characteristics of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) from the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) AGN catalogue by utilising approximately five years of optical light curves from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-12 Vivek Kumar Jha , Debbijoy Bhattacharya , Hum Chand

We investigate the relationship among the jet magnetic field, black hole spin, black hole mass, Eddington ratio, and optical variability timescales in jetted active galactic nuclei (AGNs). By fitting a damped random walk (DRW) model to the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-10-27 Yongyun Chen , Qiusheng Gu , Junhui Fan , Dingrong Xiong , Xiaoling Yu , Xiaotong Guo , Nan Ding , Ting-Feng Yi

The variability mechanisms from jetted AGNs are still under debate. Here the damped random walk (DRW) model, implemented through Gaussian Processe (GPs), is used to fit the $ZTF$ long-term optical light curves of 1684 $\gamma$-ray emission…

Discrepancies between reported structure function (SF) slopes and their overall flatness as compared to expectations from the damped random walk (DRW) model, which generally well describes the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs),…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-03-06 Szymon Kozłowski

Variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) has long been servicing as an essential avenue of exploring the accretion physics of black hole (BH). There are two commonly used methods for analyzing AGN variability. First, the AGN…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-07-04 Zhen-Bo Su , Zhen-Yi Cai , Mouyuan Sun , Hengxiao Guo , Wei-Min Gu , Jun-Xian Wang

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) exhibit variability in their luminosities with timescales that correlate with the mass of the black hole at the centre of the AGN. Presently, the empirical correlation lacks sufficient precision to confidently…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-12-22 Adrien Hélias , Sarah C. Gallagher , Pauline Barmby

Here we investigate the connection of broad emission line shapes and continuum light curve variability time scales of type-1 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). We developed a new model to describe optical broad emission lines as an accretion…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-05-21 E. Bon , P. Jovanovic , P. Marziani , N. Bon , A. Otasevic

The physical origin of the recently identified slow-moving temperature fluctuations in accretion disks around super-massive black holes (SMBHs) cannot be accounted for by reverberation models. In this work, we propose that large-scale…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-04 Hongzhe Zhou , Dong Lai

We present a phenomenological forward Monte Carlo model for forecasting the population of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in dwarf galaxies observable via their optical variability. Our model accounts for expected changes in the spectral…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-08-14 Colin J. Burke , Yue Shen , Xin Liu , Priyamvada Natarajan , Neven Caplar , Jillian M. Bellovary , Z. Franklin Wang

We conduct an analysis of over 60,000 dwarf galaxies (7<=log(M_*/M_\odot)<=10) in search of photometric variability indicative of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Using data from the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE), a time domain survey on…

Periodic variability in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is a promising method for studying sub-parsec supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), which are a challenging detection target. While extensive searches have been made in the optical,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-11-13 Di Luo , Ning Jiang , Xin Liu

We test the consistency of active galactic nuclei (AGN) optical flux variability with the $\textit{damped random walk}$ (DRW) model. Our sample consists of 20 multi-quarter $\textit{Kepler}$ AGN light curves including both Type 1 and 2…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-07-03 Vishal P. Kasliwal , Michael S. Vogeley , Gordon T. Richards

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) show a correlation between the size of the broad line region (BLR) and the monochromatic continuum luminosity at 5100 \AA, allowing black hole mass estimation based on single-epoch spectra. However, the…

Several investigations of the X-ray variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) using the normalised excess variance (${\sigma^2_{\rm NXS}}$) parameter have shown that variability has a strong anti-correlation with black hole mass ($M_{\rm…

Context. Variability is a ubiquitous feature of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and the characterisation of the variability is crucial to constrain its physical mechanism and proper applications in AGN studies. The advent of all-sky and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-06-04 Heechan Yuk , Xinyu Dai
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