Related papers: AGN Unification and the X-ray Background
The paradigm for AGN unification is reviewed, in terms of its optical manifestation as obscuration in the equatorial plane and its radio manifestation as relativistic beaming of the jet emission. Within this paradigm, observed AGN…
In recent years deep X-ray and infrared surveys have provided an efficient way to find accreting supermassive black holes, otherwise known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), in the young universe. Such surveys can, unlike optical surveys,…
The Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) combines deep HST and Spitzer imaging with the deepest Chandra/XMM observations to probe obscured AGN at higher redshifts than previous multiwavelength surveys. We present a…
Most Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are `obscured', i.e. the nucleus is hiding behind a screen of absorbing material. The advantage of having the nucleus obscured is to make easier the observations of those emission components which originate…
The spectra of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are often characterized by a wealth of emission lines with different profiles and intensity ratios that led to a complicated classification. Their electro-magnetic radiation spans more than 10…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are highly energetic astrophysical sources powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes in galaxies, which present unique observational signatures covering the full electromagnetic spectrum (and more) over…
Recent Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys have uncovered a large fraction of the obscured AGN responsible of the hard X-ray background. One of the most intriguing results of extensive programs of follow-up observations concerns the optical and…
In unified models, different types of active galaxy nuclei correspond to a single class of objects, where their observed differences are solely due to the different orientations of the obscuring material around the central inner regions.…
We study the incidence of nuclear obscuration on a complete sample of 1310 AGN selected on the basis of their rest-frame 2-10 keV X-ray flux from the XMM-COSMOS survey, in the redshift range 0.3<z<3.5. We classify the AGN as obscured or…
A complete census of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is a prerequisite for understanding the growth of supermassive black holes across cosmic time. A significant challenge toward this goal is the whereabouts of heavily obscured AGN that remain…
The diffuse cosmic X-ray background (CXB) is the sum of the emission of discrete sources, mostly massive black-holes accreting matter in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The CXB spectrum differs from the integration of the spectra of…
We present a large sample of infrared-luminous candidate active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that lack X-ray detections in Chandra, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR fields. We selected all optically detected SDSS sources with redshift measurements,…
Many X-ray bright active galactic nuclei (AGN) are predicted to follow an extended stage of obscured black hole growth. In support of this picture we examine the X-ray undetected AGNs in the COSMOS field and compare their host galaxies with…
In this work, we study the AGN radio detection effectiveness in the major deep extragalactic surveys, considering different AGN obscuration levels, redshift, and AGN bolometric luminosities. We particularly focus on comparing their radio…
Using a simple unification model for AGN, with a fixed ratio of obscured to unobscured AGN of 3:1, we explain the X-ray, optical and infrared properties of the X-ray sources in the GOODS fields. That is, the GOODS data are consistent with…
The appearance of active galactic nuclei (AGN) depends so strongly on orientation that our current classification schemes are dominated by random pointing directions instead of more interesting physical properties. Light from the centers of…
A great deal of interest has been generated recently by the results of deep submillimetre surveys, which in principle allow an unobscured view of dust-enshrouded star formation at high redshift. The extragalactic far-infrared and…
Models invoking large populations of obscured AGN are known to provide good fits to the spectrum of the X-ray background and the observed soft and hard X-ray number counts. An important consequence of these models is that significant…
The unification of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is a model that has been difficult to test due to the lack of knowledge on the intrinsic luminosities of the objects. We present a test were we probe the model by statistical investigation of…
This review describes recent developments related to the unified model of active galactic nuclei (AGN). It focuses on new ideas about the origin and properties of the central obscurer (torus), and the connection with its surrounding. The…