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Related papers: Changing-look Active Galactic Nuclei from SDSS, LA…

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Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) exhibit dramatic spectral variability on unexpectedly short timescales, challenging standard accretion flow models. Despite growing samples, the physical drivers of this extreme variability,…

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) that show strong rest-frame optical/UV variability in their blue continuum and broad line emission are classified as "changing-look" AGN, or at higher luminosities changing look quasars (CLQs). These…

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGN) exhibit spectroscopic and photometric changes on timescales of months to years, making them powerful laboratories for studying accretion variability onto supermassive black holes. Motivated by…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-20 Mariangella Camus , Swayamtrupta Panda

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CLAGNs) are known to change their spectral type between 1 and 2 (changing-state) or change their absorption between Compton-thick and Compton-thin (changing-obscuration) on timescales of years or less.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-01-17 Bing Lyu , Zhen Yan , Xue-bing Wu , Qingwen Wu , Wenfei Yu , Hao Liu

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) can vary significantly in their rest-frame optical/UV continuum emission, and with strong associated changes in broad line emission, on much shorter timescales than predicted by standard models of accretion…

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

We develop a simple method to search for changing-look (CL) active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidates, and conduct a test run. In this method, optical variations of AGNs are monitored and CL-AGNs may appear to have a pattern of being bluer…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-18 Li-tao Zhu , Zhongxiang Wang , P. U. Devanand , Alok C. Gupta , Karan Dogra , Jie Li , Ju-Jia Zhang , Shun-hao Ji , Si-si Sun

We present second epoch optical spectra for 30 changing-look (CL) candidates found by searching for Type-1 optical variability in a sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) spectroscopically classified as Type 2. We use a random-forest-based…

"Changing-look quasars" (CLQs) are active galactic nuclei (AGN) showing extreme variability that results in a transition from Type 1 to Type 2. The short timescales of these transitions present a challenge to the unified model of AGN and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-06-09 B. Potts , C. Villforth

The phenomenon of changing-look (CL) behavior in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is characterized by dramatic changes in luminosity and/or emission line profiles over relatively short periods, ranging from months to years. The origin of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-06-19 Yihan Wang , Matthew J. Graham , K. E. Saavik Ford , Barry McKernan , Taeho Ryu , Daniel Stern

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are known to show flux variability over all observable timescales and across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Over the past decade, a growing number of sources have been observed to show dramatic flux and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-11-11 Claudio Ricci , Benny Trakhtenbrot

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

"Changing-look" active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) are a newly-discovered class of AGNs that show the appearance (or disappearance) of broad emission lines within a short time scale (months to years) and are often associated with the dramatic…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-03-09 Jun-Jie Jin , Xue-Bing Wu , Xiao-Tong Feng

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

Changing-Look Active Galactic Nuclei (CLAGN) are a rare subset of AGN that show significant changes to the flux of broad Balmer emission lines. Recent studies of CLAGN, such as 1ES 1927+654 and Mrk 590, have revealed that changes in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-03 Sufia Birmingham , Charlotte Ward , Kristina Nyland , Dougal Dobie , Matthew J. Graham , David L. Kaplan , Tara Murphy

The discovery of changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs), with appearance and disappearance of broad emission lines and/or with strong variation of line-of-sight column density within a few years, challenges the AGN unification…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-12-10 Hao liu , Qingwen Wu , Bing Lyu , Zhen Yan

Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL AGNs) show large changes in luminosity and optical spectral state on time-scales of a few years, and provide a valuable probe of time-dependent accretion in the disc-BLR-torus system. We present a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-19 Yu Tao , Jie Tang , Xuan Wei

Context. Changing-look active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) challenge the unified model of AGNs and offer key insights into the physics of the accretion processes of super-massive black holes. While systematic spectroscopic comparisons have…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-26 Litao Zhu , Zhongxiang Wang , Alok C. Gupta , P. U. Devanand , Ruoheng Yang , Qiangmeng Huang , Man Lang , Jiawen Li

We present a systematic search for changing-look (CL) quasars at high redshift z > 0.9 by cross-matching the spectroscopic datasets from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Data Release 1 and Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 18.…