Related papers: Some Comments related to AGN Radio Loudness
Since the discovery of Quasi-stellar Objects (QSOs), also known as quasars, they have been traditionally subdivided as radio-loud and radio-quiet sources. Whether such division is a misleading effect from a highly heterogeneous single…
Accreting stellar-mass black holes appear to populate two branches in a radio:X-ray luminosity plane. We have investigated the X-ray variability properties of a large number of black hole low-mass X-ray binaries, with the aim of unveiling…
It has been suggested that the X-shaped morphology observed in some radio sources can reflect either a recent merger of two supermassive black holes (SMBHs) or the presence of a second active black hole in the galactic nucleus. These…
Force balance considerations put a limit on the rate of AGN radiation momentum output, $L/c$, capable of driving galactic superwinds and reproducing the observed $\mbh -\sigma $ relation between black hole mass and spheroid velocity…
Combined investigations of the clustering properties of galaxies of different spectral type and high-redshift quasars strongly suggest local ellipticals to be the parent population of optically bright Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). However,…
We present an analysis of the AGN broad-line regions of 6 powerful radio galaxies at z>~2 (HzRGs) with rest-frame optical imaging spectroscopy obtained at the VLT. All galaxies have luminous (L(H-alpha)=few x 10^44 erg s^-1), spatially…
Black hole masses for samples of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are currently estimated from single-epoch optical spectra. In particular, the size of the broad-line emitting region needed to compute the black hole mass is derived from the…
We present results from infrared spectroscopic projects that aim to test the relation between the mass of a black hole, M_BH, and the velocity dispersion of the stars in its host-galaxy bulge. We demonstrate that near-infrared,…
Using recently published estimates - based on high spatial resolution spectroscopy - of the mass M_{BH} of nuclear black holes for a sample of nearby galaxies, we explore the dependence of galaxy nucleus emissivity at various wavelengths on…
We aim to investigate the relationship between radio jet activity on parsec-scales and the characteristics of both the bright active galactic nuclei (AGN) and their broad line regions (BLR). For this purpose, we combine 2cm Very Long…
Two interesting hypotheses about black holes have been proposed. The older one states that microscopic black holes can be accountable for the observed dark matter density. The newer one states that black holes are coupled to the expansion…
The physical processes responsible of sweeping up the surrounding gas in the host galaxy of an AGN, and able in some circumstances to expel it from the galaxy, are not yet well known. The various mechanisms are briefly reviewed: quasar or…
We follow the evolution of the Black Hole mass function in the assumption that mass accretion onto a massive BH is the powering mechanism of AGN activity. With reasonable assumptions suggested by current knowledge, it is possible to…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) show evidence for reprocessing gas, outflowing from the accreting black hole. The combined effects of absorption and scattering from the circumnuclear material likely explains the `hard excess' of X-ray emission…
Type 2 active galactic nuclei (AGN) represent the majority of the AGN population. However, due to the difficulties in measuring their black hole (BH) masses, it is still unknown whether they follow the same BH mass-host galaxy scaling…
While attempts to unify certain classes of AGN using orientation and environmental effects have been successful, it is widely recognized that intrinsic properties of the accreting black hole system also must play a role in determining the…
We argue that the magnetic flux threading the black hole, rather than black hole spin or Eddington ratio, is the dominant factor in launching powerful jets and thus determining the radio loudness of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Most AGN…
Over the last 12 years, AGN monitoring by RXTE, has revolutionised our understanding of the X-ray variability of AGN, of the relationship between AGN and Galactic black hole X-ray binaries (BHBs) and hence of the accretion process itself,…
Aims. Both the black hole mass and the X-ray luminosity of AGNs have been found to be anti-correlated with the normalized excess variance ($\sigma_{\rm rms}^2 $) of the X-ray light curves. We investigate which correlation with $\sigma_{\rm…
The AGN Black Hole Mass Database is a compilation of all published spectroscopic reverberation-mapping studies of active galaxies. We have created a public web interface, where users may get the most up-to-date black hole masses from…