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Related papers: Systematic Analysis of Changing-look AGN Variabili…

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Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei (LLAGNs) are contaminated by the light of their host galaxies, thus they cannot be detected by the usual colour techniques. For this reason their evolution in cosmic time is poorly known. Variability is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2009-02-09 F. Vagnetti , K. Boutsia , D. Trevese

We present an analysis of the long-term optical variability for $\sim50,000$ nearby (z<0.055) galaxies from the NASA-Sloan Atlas, $35,000$ of which are low-mass ($M_{\ast}<10^{10}~M_{\odot}$). We use difference imaging of Palomar Transient…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-06-17 Vivienne F. Baldassare , Marla Geha , Jenny Greene

Variability is a property shared by virtually all active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and was adopted as a criterion for their selection using data from multi epoch surveys. Low Luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs) are contaminated by the light of their…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 D. Trevese , K. Boutsia , F. Vagnetti , E. Cappellaro , S. Puccetti

The discovery of spectral type transition of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), the so-called changing-look(CL) phenomenon, challenges the widely accepted AGN paradigm, not only in the orientation based Unified Model, but also in the standard…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2020-05-13 J. Wang , D. W. Xu , S. S. Sun , Q. C. Feng , T. R. Li , P. F. Xiao , J. Y. Wei

The widely accepted active galactic nucleus (AGN) paradigm has been recently challenged by the discovery of the so-called ``changing-look'' (CL) phenomenon characterized by spectral-type transitions. By comparing the SDSS-V and SDSS DR16…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2022-10-24 J. Wang , D. W. Xu , J. Y. Bai , T. G. Brink , C. Gao , W. K. Zheng , A. V. Filippenko

Double-peaked \oiii~profiles could potentially indicate kiloparsec-scale dual AGNs. We analyze long-term optical light curves of 35 type 1 AGNs with such features from our recent catalog in Zheng et al. (2025). These light curves are…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-08-04 Qi Zheng , Xingyv Zhu , Xueguang Zhang , Qirong Yuan

The evolutionary role of the so-called ``changing-look'' (CL) active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is characterized by spectral-type transitions within $\sim10$ yr, has been suggested in the past few years. By focusing on CL-AGNs having…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-24 J. Wang , S. Jin , D. W. Xu , WeiKang Zheng , Thomas G. Brink , S. Komossa , 1 Alexei V. Filippenko , J. Y. Wei

Changing look active-galatic-nuclei (CL AGNs) can yield considerable insight into accretion physics as well as the co-evolution of black holes and their host galaxies. A large sample of these CL AGNs is essential to achieve the latter goal.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-02-05 Zhenfeng Sheng , Tinggui Wang , Ning Jiang , Jiani Ding , Zheng Cai , Hengxiao Guo , Luming Sun , Liming Dou , Chenwei Yang

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 (AGN) sources feature supermassive black holes that launch relativistic plasma jets. They are key $\gamma$-ray sources providing a unique laboratory for studying extreme particle acceleration and plasma physics.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-02-03 Luana Passos-Reis , Elisabete M. de Gouveia Dal Pino , Tarek Hassan , Santiago Pita , Alberto Domínguez

Changing-Look (CL) is a rare phenomenon of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) that exhibit emerging or disappearing broad lines accompanied by continuum variations on astrophysically short timescales ($\lesssim$ 1 yr to a few decades). While…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-12-12 Hengxiao Guo , Mouyuan Sun , Xin Liu , Tinggui Wang , Minzhi Kong , Shu Wang , Zhenfeng Sheng , Zhicheng He

"Changing-look quasars" (CLQs), discovered less than a decade ago, show dramatic, rapid changes in optical/UV continuum and broad line emission. The majority of CLQs have been found dimming as "turn-off" CLQs because most selection methods…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-08-30 Qian Yang , Paul J. Green , Xue-Bing Wu , Michael Eracleous , Linhua Jiang , Yuming Fu

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

The cosmological evolution of X-ray-selected and optically selected Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) show different behaviours interpreted in terms of two different populations. The difference is evident mainly for low luminosity AGNs…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 D. Trevese , V. Zitelli , F. Vagnetti , K. Boutsia , G. M. Stirpe

We present an analysis of the nuclear variability of $\sim28,000$ nearby ($z<0.15$) galaxies with Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopy in Stripe 82. We construct light curves using difference imaging of SDSS g-band images, which…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-12-12 Vivienne F. Baldassare , Marla Geha , Jenny Greene

From a parent catalog of 561 changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) identified by Guo et al. (2025), we investigate the evolutionary sequence of broad emission lines using a redshift-selected subset (0.35 < z < 0.45) of 54 CL-AGNs…

We present a variability, color and morphology based classifier, designed to identify transients, persistently variable, and non-variable sources, from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) Data Release 11 (DR11) light curves of extended and…

The variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) has long held the promise of shedding light on their detailed structure, and possibly other astrophysical phenonema. Different emission mechanisms lead to different patterns of variability in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 M. R. S. Hawkins

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…

Two major challenges to unification schemes for active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the existence of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1s (NLS1s) and the existence of changing-look (CL) AGNs. AGNs can drastically change their spectral appearance in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-07-09 Victor L. Oknyansky , Konstantin L. Malanchev , C. Martin Gaskell