Related papers: Quasars, Gamma Ray Bursters and BL Lacertids
Gamma-ray bursts are associated with catastrophic cosmic events. They appear when a new black hole, created after the explosion of a massive star or the merger of two compact stars, quickly accretes the matter around it and ejects a…
The uncharted territory of the high-redshift ($z\gtrsim3$) Universe holds the key to understand the evolution of quasars. In an attempt to identify the most extreme members of the quasar population, i.e., blazars, we have carried out a…
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are short and intense pulses of $\gamma$-rays arriving from random directions in the sky. Several years ago Amelino-Camelia et al. pointed out that a comparison of time of arrival of photons at different energies…
Quasars accreting at very high rates are believed to be prime movers of galactic evolution because of their high radiative and mechanical output. The study presented in this paper investigates a sample of six highly accreting quasars at…
The next generation of gamma-ray telescopes may be able to observe gamma-ray blazars at high redshift, possibly out to the epoch of reionization. The spectrum of such sources should exhibit an absorption edge due to pair-production against…
Lyman-alpha absorption is a prominent cosmological tool for probing both galactic halos and the intergalactic medium at high redshift. We consider a variety of sources that can be used as the Lyman-alpha emitters for this purpose. Among…
The unrivalled, extreme luminosities of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) make them the favored beacons for sampling the high redshift Universe. To employ GRBs to study the cosmic terrain -- e.g., star and galaxy formation history -- GRB luminosities…
Quasars at large redshifts provide a powerful probe of structure formation in the early universe. Several arguments suggest that the formation of ellipticals and massive bulges may have involved an early quasar phase. At very large…
Spectroscopy of high-redshift compact steep-spectrum (CSS) quasars shows a high incidence of Ly-alpha absorption close to the quasar redshift. Associated absorption systems like these are rare in other types of radio sources, with the…
Analysis of ROSAT observations demonstrate that X-ray sources are associated with bright Seyfert galaxies up to distances of about 40 arc min. These X-ray sources are predominantly identified with blue stellar objects (BSO's) some of which…
We study the quasi-simultaneous near-IR, optical, UV, and X-ray photometry of eleven gamma-ray selected blazars for which redshift estimates larger than 1.2 have been recently provided. Four of these objects turn out to be high-power…
The detection of high-redshift ($z>$3) blazars enables the study of the evolution of the most luminous relativistic jets over cosmic time. More importantly, high-redshift blazars tend to host massive black holes and can be used to constrain…
Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are extra-galactic and extremely energetic transient emissions of gamma rays, which are thought to be associated with the death of massive stars or the merger of compact objects in binary systems. Their huge…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have long been considered as candidates of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). We investigate the signatures of CR proton acceleration in the GRBs by consistently taking into account their hadronic and…
Scattering relativistic electrons with optical lasers can result in a significant frequency upshift for the photons, potentially producing $\gamma$-rays. This is what linear Compton scattering taught us. Ultra-intense lasers offer nowadays…
Observations of a long-lasting Gamma-ray burst, one that has the brightest optical counterpart yet discovered, challenge theoretical understanding of these bursts but may enhance their usefulness as cosmic probes.
This paper considers the hypothesis that BL Lacertae objects (BLLs) are the beamed remnants of Quasi Stellar Objects. The hypothesis explains why BLLs do not undergo the strong evolution seen in other active galactic nuclei since it…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are a mixed class of sources consisting of, at least, the long duration and short-hard subclasses, the X-ray flashes, and the low-luminosity GRBs. In all cases, the release of enormous amounts of energy on a short…
Spectra of quasars result primarily from interactions of natural light with atomic hydrogen. A visible absorption of a sharp and saturated spectral line in a gas requires a low pressure, so a long path without blushing as a cosmological…
Coalescing binary systems, consisting of two collapsed objects, are among the most promising sources of high frequency gravitational waves signals detectable, in principle, by ground-based interferometers. Binary systems of Neutron Star or…