Related papers: The Ghost in the Machine

Precise mechanisms by which Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) receive their gaseous fuel is still a mystery. Here I draw attention to the extra ordinary star formation event that took place in the central ~ 0.5 parsec of our Galaxy. The most…

Arbitrary Nth-order ($N\geq2$) lensless ghost imaging with thermal light has been performed for the first time by only recording the intensities in two optical paths. It is shown that the image visibility can be dramatically enhanced as the…

I outline the theory of accretion onto black holes, and its application to observed phenomena such as X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, tidal disruption events, and gamma-ray bursts. The dynamics as well as radiative signatures of…

Within the standard accretion disk theory for active galactic nuclei (AGN), the observed X-rays are often modeled by Compton up-scattering of ultraviolet (UV) disk photons inside a hot disk corona. Here, we point out that for many AGN,…

We analyze the X-ray properties for a sample of 23 high probability AGN candidates with ultraviolet variability identified in Wasleske et al. (2022). Using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the XMM-Newton Observatory, we find…

The status of our current understanding of angular momentum transport in accretion disks is reviewed. The last decade has seen a dramatic increase both in the recognition of key physical processes and in our ability to carry through direct…

Accretion disks around compact objects are expected to enter an unstable phase at high luminosity. One instability may occur when the radiation pressure generated by accretion modifies the disk viscosity, resulting in the cyclic depletion…

We will briefly examine the following three issues related to the AGN synthesis models for X-ray background: 1) the possibility that absorbed AGNs evolve faster than unabsorbed ones; 2) the existence of the still debated population of…

We describe the most general nature of accretion and wind flows around a compact object and emphasize on the properties which are special to black hole accretion. The angular momentum distribution in the most general solution is far from…

Jets and winds are significant channels for energy loss from accreting black holes. These outflows mechanically heat their surroundings, through shocks as well as gentler forms of heating. We discuss recent efforts to understand the nature…

This paper reviews our current understanding of low-luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs) in the context of the advection-dominated accretion flow. The best investigated source, the supermassive black hole in our galactic center, Sgr A*, is emphasized…

Reflection of X-rays from cool material around a black hole is one of the few observational diagnostics of the accretion flow geometry. Models of this reflected spectrum generally assume that the accretion disk can be characterized by…

We carried out three-dimensional global resistive magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the cooling instability in optically thin hot black hole accretion flows by assuming bremsstrahlung cooling. General relativistic effects are…

This chapter provides a general overview of the theory and observations of black holes in the Universe and on their interpretation. We briefly review the black hole classes, accretion disk models, spectral state classification, the AGN…

We use a high-temperature chemical network to derive the molecular abundances in axisymmetric accretion disk models around active galactic nuclei (AGNs) within 100 pc using simple radial and vertical density and temperature distributions…

We present three-dimensional (3-D) hydrodynamical simulations of gas flows in the vicinity of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) powered by a precessing accretion disk. We consider the effects of the radiation force from such a disk on its…

Both long and short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are expected to occur in the dense environments of active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks. As these bursts propagate through the disks they live in, they photoionize the medium causing…

We study an accretion disc with a hot continuous corona. We assume that the corona itself accretes and therefore it is powered directly by the release of the gravitational energy and cooled by radiative interaction with the disc. We…

We calculate the observable signature of a black hole accretion disk with a gap or hole created by a secondary black hole embedded in the disk. We find that for an interesting range of parameters of black hole masses (~10^6 to 10^9 solar…

As described in the review by Marek Abramowicz (these proceedings), accretion theory is at something of a crossroads. Many theoretical descriptions of observations have centered on the ``hydrodynamic'' approach of the ``standard'' Shakura &…