Related papers: On Nulling Interferometers and the Line-Emitting R…
One of the biggest challenges associated with a nulling interferometer-based approach to detecting extra-solar Earth-like planets comes from the extremely stringent requirements of pathlength, polarization and amplitude matching in the…
We use spatially resolved long-slit spectroscopy from Magellan to investigate the extent, kinematics, and ionization structure in the narrow-line regions of 15 luminous, obscured quasars with z<0.5. Increasing the dynamic range in…
In this paper, we review the various ways in which an infrared stellar interferometer can be used to perform direct detection of extrasolar planetary systems. We first review the techniques based on classical stellar interferometry, where…
Nulling interferometry is a promising technique for direct detection of exoplanets. However, the performance of current devices is limited by different perturbations sources and especially by its sensitivity to any phase aberrations. The…
Infrared (IR) interferometry has made widely recognised contributions to the way we look at the dusty environment of supermassive black holes on parsec scales. It finally provided direct evidence for orientation-dependent unification of…
Imaging the direct light signal from a faint exoplanet against the overwhelming glare of its host star presents one of the fundamental challenges to modern astronomical instrumentation. Achieving sufficient signal-to-noise for detection by…
Ionization cones and relativistic jets give us one of the most large-scale example of active galactic nuclei (AGN) influence on the surrounding gas environment in galaxies and beyond. The study of ionization cones makes it possible not only…
Motivated by recent progress in the statistical modeling of quasar variability, we develop a new approach to measuring emission-line reverberation lags to estimate the size of broad-line regions (BLRs) in active galactic nuclei. Assuming…
Microlensing of gravitationally lensed quasars by the stars in the foreground lens galaxy can be used to probe the nature of dark matter, to determine the mean stellar mass in the lens galaxy, and to measure the internal structure of quasar…
The relative brightnesses of strongly lensed quasar images, called flux ratios, respond to perturbations from low-mass dark matter halos, enabling tests of dark matter models. The quasar narrow-line region (NLR) is ideal for flux-ratio…
The study of the content, distribution and kinematics of interstellar gas is a key to understand the origin and maintenance of both starburst and nuclear (AGN) activity in galaxies. The processes involved in AGN fueling encompass a wide…
Since the discovery of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and their subclasses, a unification scheme of AGN has been long sought. Orientation-based unified models predict that some of the diversity within AGN subclasses can be explained by the…
Intensity interferometry is a technique developed many decades ago, that has recently enjoyed a renaissance thanks in part to advances in photodetector technology. We investigate the potential for long-baseline optical intensity…
Herein is discussed the performance of spaceborne nulling interferometers searching for extra-solar planets, in terms of their extinction maps projected on-sky. In particular, it is shown that the designs of Spatial Filtering (SF) and…
Nulling interferometry is an astronomical technique that combines equal wavefronts to achieve a deep rejection ratio of an on-axis star, and that could permit to detect Earth-like planets in the mid-infrared band 5 -- 20 microns. Similarly…
Infrared spectroscopy in the mid- and far-infrared provides powerful diagnostics for studying the emission regions in active galaxies. The large variety of ionic fine structure lines can probe gas conditions in a variety of physical…
The most obvious extragalactic targets for optical/infrared interferometers are Active Galactic Nuclei. In this document, I try to overview other topics that could be of interest to studies of galaxies and whether they could be adequate for…
We analyze Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer observations of nine low-redshift (z < 0.1) Palomar-Green quasar host galaxies to investigate the spatial distribution and kinematics of the warm, ionized interstellar medium, with the goal of…
Reverberation mapping is now a well-established technique for investigating spatially-unresolved structures in the nuclei of distant galaxies with actively-accreting supermassive black holes. Structural parameters for the broad…
Black hole masses for samples of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are currently estimated from single-epoch optical spectra using scaling relations anchored in reverberation mapping results. In particular, the two quantities needed for…