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Multiple models have been suggested over the years to explain the structure and support of accretion disks around supermassive black holes, from the standard thin thermal-pressure-dominated $\alpha$-disk model to more recent models that…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-28 Yashvardhan Tomar , Philip F. Hopkins , Kyle Kremer

The presence of a circumnuclear stellar disk around Sgr A* and megamaser systems near other black holes indicates that dense neutral disks can be found in galactic nuclei. We show that depending on their inclination angle, optical depth,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-11-18 Pierre Christian , Abraham Loeb

Stellar mass black holes in the disks around active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising sources for gravitational wave detections by LIGO/VIRGO. Recent studies suggest this environment fosters the formation and merger of binary black holes.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-09-10 Bhupendra Mishra , Josh Calcino

Among the most extreme objects in the Universe, active galactic nuclei (AGN) are luminous centers of galaxies where a black hole feeds on surrounding matter. The variability patterns of the light emitted by an AGN contain information about…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2021-06-22 Ji Won Park , Ashley Villar , Yin Li , Yan-Fei Jiang , Shirley Ho , Joshua Yao-Yu Lin , Philip J. Marshall , Aaron Roodman

The observation of multiple images from a strongly lensed gravitational wave (GW) source provides the observer with a stereoscopic view of the source. This allows for a measure of its relative proper motion by comparing the induced GW…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-25 Johan Samsing , Lorenz Zwick , Pankaj Saini , János Takátsy

We present a high density disc reflection spectral analysis of a sample of 17 Seyfert 1 galaxies to study the inner disc densities at different black hole mass scales and accretion rates. All the available XMM-Newton observations in the…

The population properties of intermediate mass black holes remain largely unknown, and understanding their distribution could provide a missing link in the formation of supermassive black holes and galaxies. Gravitational wave observations…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-06-22 Joseph Gais , Ken Ng , Eungwang Seo , Kaze W. K. Wong , Tjonnie G. F. Li

Using grid-based hydrodynamics simulations and analytic modeling, we compute the electromagnetic (EM) signatures of gravitational wave (GW) driven inspirals of massive black hole binaries that accrete gas from circumbinary disks, exploring…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-02-26 Jonathan Zrake , Madeline Clyburn , Samuel Feyan

An accretion disk in an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) harbors and shields dust from external illumination: at the mid-plane of the disk around a $M_{{\rm BH}}=10^{7}M_{\odot}$ black hole, dust can exist at $0.1$pc from the black hole,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-04-07 Anton Dorodnitsyn , Tim Kallman

We explore the evolution of stellar mass black hole binaries (BHBs) which are formed in the self-gravitating disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Hardening due to three-body scattering and gaseous drag are effective mechanisms that reduce…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-01-03 Nicholas C. Stone , Brian D. Metzger , Zoltan Haiman

Mass and spin are two fundamental properties of astrophysical black holes. While some established, indirect methods are adopted to measure both these properties of active galactic nuclei (AGN) when viewed relatively face-on, very few…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-02-09 Alberto Masini , Annalisa Celotti , Samuele Campitiello

Although accretion disks are a theoretically appealing model for the geometry and dynamics of the gas in the vicinity of black holes in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), there is little direct observational evidence for their existence. The…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Iskra Strateva , Michael A. Strauss , Lei Hao

Here we discuss the effects of strong gravity that can be observed in electromagnetic spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN). According to the unification model of an AGN, there is a supermassive black hole ($10^7 - 10^9 M_\odot$) in its…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-25 P. Jovanović , L. Č. Popović

We have investigated the gas content of a sample of several hundred AGN host galaxies at z$<$1 and compared it with a sample of inactive galaxies, matched in bins of stellar mass and redshift. Gas masses have been inferred from the dust…

We use morphological information of X-ray selected AGN hosts to set limits on the fraction of the accretion density of the Universe at z~1 that is not likely to be associated with major mergers. Deep X-ray observations are combined with…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 A. Georgakakis , A. L. Coil , E. S. Laird , R. L. Griffith , K. Nandra , J. M. Lotz , C. M. Pierce , M. C. Cooper , J. A. Newman , A. M. Koekemoer

Models of accretion discs surrounding active galactic nuclei (AGNs) find vast applications in high-energy astrophysics. The broad strategy is to parametrize some of the key disc properties such as gas density and temperature as a function…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-05-15 Daria Gangardt , Alessandro Alberto Trani , Clément Bonnerot , Davide Gerosa

Intensity interferometry is a technique developed many decades ago, that has recently enjoyed a renaissance thanks in part to advances in photodetector technology. We investigate the potential for long-baseline optical intensity…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-03-28 Neal Dalal , Marios Galanis , Charles Gammie , Samuel E. Gralla , Norman Murray

It has been suggested that merging black hole (BH) binaries in active galactic nucleus (AGN) discs formed through two-body scatterings via the gas-capture process may explain a significant fraction of BH mergers in AGN and a non-negligible…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-12-10 Connar Rowan , Henry Whitehead , Bence Kocsis

The majority of gravitational wave (GW) events detected so far by LIGO/Virgo originate from binary black hole (BBH) mergers. Among the different binary evolution paths, the merger of BBHs in accretion discs of active galactic nuclei (AGNs)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-07-01 Matthias Gröbner , Wako Ishibashi , Shubhanshu Tiwari , Maria Haney , Philippe Jetzer

Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) formed in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks are expected to inspiral into their central supermassive black holes (SMBHs), generating a stochastic gravitational-wave (GW) background in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-11 Chiara M. F. Mingarelli