Related papers: Magnetic fields in AGNs and microquasars
Magnetic fields large enough to be observable are ubiquitous in astrophysics, even at extremely large length scales. This has led to the suggestion that such fields are seeded at very early (inflationary) times, and subsequently amplified…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) can be probed by at different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum: e.g., radio observations reveal the nature of their relativistic jets and their magnetic fields, and complementarily, X-ray observations…
The concept of a "magnetar" was proposed mainly because of two factors. First, the X-ray luminosity of Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) and Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters (SGRs) is larger than the rotational energy loss rate, and second, the…
The analysis of relativistically broadened X-ray spectral features from the inner accretion disk provides a powerful tool for measuring the spin of supermassive black holes (SMBH) in active galactic nuclei (AGN). However, AGN spectra are…
In most accreting black-hole systems the copious X-rays commonly observed from the inner-most regions are accompanied by a reflection spectrum. The latter is the signature of energetic photons reprocessed by the optically thick material of…
X-ray observations provide a powerful tool to probe the central engines of active galactic nuclei (AGN). A hard X-ray continuum is produced from deep within the accretion flow onto the supermassive black hole, and all optically thick…
The spectrum of cyclotron radiation is calculated for anisotropically distributed relativistic electrons with a nonrelativistic velocity scattering across the magnetic field. It is shown that if such electrons are responsible for a…
In the last few years it has been recognized that two apparently distinct classes of peculiar high-energy sources are actually related and can be explained as young neutron stars with magnetic fields as high as 10e14 - 10e15 Gauss. One of…
The origin of magnetic fields in the Universe is an open problem in astrophysics and fundamental physics. Our present-day knowledge is limited to regions of strong magnetic fields and to star-forming disks of galaxies. Low-energy electrons…
(Abridged) We constrain simulated all-sky maps in total intensity, linear polarization, and rotation measure (RM) by observations. We test a number of large-scale magnetic field configurations and take the properties of the warm…
Spectroscopy of X-ray emission lines emitted in accretion discs around supermassive black holes is one of the most powerful probes of the accretion flow physics and geometry, while also providing in principle observational constraints on…
We summarize recent results on the infrared (IR) nuclear properties of Seyfert galaxies. 100% of all Seyfert 1-1.9$ and ~50% of all Seyfert 2s in the CfA and RSA samples observed with HST/NICMOS show nuclear point sources at 1.6micron. We…
(abridged) With most physicists and astrophysicists in agreement that black holes do indeed exist, the focus of astrophysical black hole research has shifted to the detailed properties of these systems. Nature has provided us with an…
Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray observations are accumulating evidence for massive, high velocity outflows in Seyfert galaxies and quasars, most likely originating very close to the central supermassive black hole. These results are offering…
We briefly review some recent results from Chandra and XMM-Newton studies of the highest redshift (z > 4) active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Specific topics covered include radio-quiet quasars, radio-loud quasars, moderate-luminosity AGNs in…
Recent work by Risaliti et al.(1999) suggests that more than half of all Seyfert 2 galaxies in the local universe are Compton-thick (N_H > 10^24 cm^-2). This has implications for AGN synthesis models for the X-ray background (XRB), the…
Observations indicate that magnetic fields on neutron stars span at least the range $10^{8-15}$ G, corresponding to a range of magnetic fluxes similar to that found in white dwarfs and main sequence stars. The observational evidence is…
Recent observations with Chandra and XMM-Newton, aided by broad-band spectral coverage from RXTE, have revealed skewed relativistic iron emission lines in stellar-mass Galactic black hole systems. Such systems are excellent laboratories for…
Whether X-ray emission in radio-loud (RL) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) originates from disk coronae or jets is still under debate. For example, the positive relationships in radio-quiet (RQ) AGNs (such as the optical to X-ray spectral…
We investigate the far-infrared (far-IR) incidence of X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGN) and non-AGN galaxies as a function of stellar mass (M$_*$), star formation rate (SFR), and specific black hole accretion rate…