Related papers: Accretion disc reverberation mapping in a high-red…
To address the discrepancy where disk sizes exceed those predicted by standard models, we explore two extensions to disk size estimates within the UV/optical wavelength range: disk winds and color correction. We provide detailed,…
Q0957+561 was the first discovered gravitationally lensed quasar. The mirage shows two images of a radio-loud quasar at redshift z = 1.41. The time lag between these two images is well established around one year. We detected a very…
We present a joint estimate of the stellar/dark matter mass fraction in lens galaxies and the average size of the accretion disk of lensed quasars from microlensing measurements of 27 quasar image pairs seen through 19 lens galaxies. The…
There is a maximum for the gravity of a black hole in the vertical direction in the accretion disc. Outflows may probably be driven from the disc if the radiation flux of the disc is greater than a critical value corresponding to the…
Quasars are galaxies hosting accreting supermassive black holes; due to their brightness, they are unique probes of the early universe. To date, only few quasars have been reported at $z > 6.5$ ($<$800 Myr after the Big Bang). In this work,…
Accretion processes in quasars and active galactic nuclei are still poorly understood, especially as far as the connection between observed spectral properties and physical parameters is concerned. Quasars show an additional degree of…
We continue our study of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 11 AGN at 1.5 < z < 2.2, with optical-NIR spectra, X-ray data and mid-IR photometry. In a previous paper we presented the observations and models; in this paper we explore…
Observations of high-redshift quasars hosting billion solar mass black holes at $z\gtrsim6$ challenge our understanding of early supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth. In this work, we conduct a near-infrared spectroscopic study of $19$…
Gas falling quasi-spherically onto a black hole forms an inner accretion disc if its specific angular momentum $l$ exceeds $\lmin\sim r_gc$ where $r_g$ is the Schwarzschild radius. The standard disc model assumes $l\gg\lmin$. We argue that,…
Infrared spectroscopy of the H-alpha emission lines of a sub-sample of 19 high-redshift (0.8 < z < 2.3) Molonglo quasars, selected at 408 MHz, is presented. These emission lines are fitted with composite models of broad and narrow emission,…
Wang et al. (2006) estimated an average radiative efficiency of 30% -- 35% for quasars at moderate redshift. We find that their method is not independent of quasar lifetimes and thus that quasars do not necessarily have such high…
Quasars accretion models predict a broad range of optical and ultraviolet properties that depend primarily on black hole mass and accretion rate. Yet, most optically selected luminous quasars display strikingly similar continuum spectra. We…
Our current understanding of the curved space-time around supermassive black holes is based on actively accreting black holes, which make up only ten per cent or less of the overall population. X-ray observations of that small fraction…
We present accretion-disk structure measurements from UV-optical reverberation mapping observations of a sample of eight quasars at 0.24<z<0.85. Ultraviolet photometry comes from two cycles of Hubble Space Telescope monitoring, accompanied…
We investigate the structure and emission properties of a thin accretion disk around a rotating charged black hole described by an effective higher-curvature-inspired spacetime, constructed as a phenomenological deformation of the Kerr…
The co-evolution of a supermassive black hole with its host galaxy through cosmic time is encoded in its spin. At $z>2$, supermassive black holes are thought to grow mostly by merger-driven accretion leading to high spin. However, it is…
We present monitoring observations of quasar microlensing in the quadruple quasar HE0435-1223. The microlensing-induced light curves of the quasar images are chromatic, i.e. they depend on the applied filter band. Comparison with…
We show that the luminosity function of the actively star-forming Lyman break galaxies and the B-band quasar luminosity function at $z = 3$ can be fit reasonably well with the mass function of collapsed galaxy scale dark matter haloes…
Microlensing has proven an effective probe of the structure of the innermost regions of quasars, and an important test of accretion disk models. We present light curves of the lensed quasar HE 0435-1223 in the R band and in the ultraviolet,…
We present 13 seasons of $R$-band photometry of the quadruply-lensed quasar WFI 2033-4723 from the 1.3m SMARTS telescope at CTIO and the 1.2m Euler Swiss Telescope at La Silla, in which we detect microlensing variability of $\sim0.2$ mags…