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Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHB) are expected to produce periodic modulations in active galactic nuclei (AGN) light curves, but distinguishing such signals from stochastic red-noise variability remains a major challenge. We present…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-13 Pablo Huijse , Jordy Davelaar , Joris De Ridder , Nicholas Jannsen , Conny Aerts

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

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

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

Theory predicts that a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) could be observed as a luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN) that periodically varies on the order of its orbital timescale. In X-rays, periodic variations could be caused by…

We report on the case of optical periodic modulation discovered in two Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and one candidate AGN. Analyzing the archival optical data obtained from large transient surveys, namely the Catalina Real-Transient Survey…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-05-03 Jie Li , Zhongxiang Wang , Dong Zheng

We explore the presence of active galactic nuclei (AGN)/black holes (BH) in Green Pea galaxies (GPs), motivated by the presence of high ionization emission lines such as HeII and [NeIII] in their optical spectra. In order to identify AGN…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-05-09 Santosh Harish , Sangeeta Malhotra , James E. Rhoads , Tianxing Jiang , Huan Yang , Kendrick Knorr

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

The extremes of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) variability offer valuable new insights into the drivers and physics of AGN. We discuss some of the most extreme cases of AGN variability; the highest amplitudes, deep minima states, extreme…

Off-nucleus active galactic nuclei (AGN) can be signposts of inspiraling supermassive black holes (SMBHs) on galactic scales, or accreting SMBHs recoiling after the coalescence of a SMBH binary or slingshot from three-body interactions.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-08-17 Yue Shen , Hsiang-Chih Hwang , Nadia Zakamska , Xin Liu

Optical quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) with periodicity around hundreds to thousands of days have been accepted as an efficient indicator for sub-pc binary black hole systems (BBHs) in broad line active galactic nuclei (BLAGN). However,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-17 Zhang XueGuang

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are well-known to exhibit flux variability across a wide range of wavelength regimes, but the precise origin of the variability at different wavelengths remains unclear. To investigate the relatively unexplored…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-24 James R. A. Davenport , John J. Ruan , Andrew C. Becker , Chelsea L. Macleod , Roc M. Cutri

Understanding the origin and evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBH) stands as one of the most important challenges in astrophysics and cosmology, with little current theoretical consensus. Improved observational constraints on the…

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 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 present results of recurrence analysis of 46 active galactic nuclei (AGN) using light curves from the 157-month catalog of the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) in the 14-150 keV band. We generate recurrence plots and compute recurrence…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-11-28 R. A. Phillipson , M. S. Vogeley , P. T. Boyd

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

Interband lags in the optical continua of active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been observed over years of monitoring, yet their physical origins remain unclear. While variable interband lags have been found in a few individual AGN…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-08 Zhen-Bo Su , Zhen-Yi Cai , Hengxiao Guo , Mouyuan Sun , Jun-Xian Wang

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

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
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