Related papers: Do nuclear starbursts obscure the X-ray background…
We have studied the nuclear activity in a sample of six quiescent early-type galaxies, with new Chandra data and archival HST optical images. Their nuclear sources have X-ray luminosities ~ 10^{38} - 10^{39} erg/s (L_X/L_Edd ~ 10^{-8} -…
We study a sample of $\sim$50,000 dwarf starburst and late-type galaxies drawn from the COSMOS survey with the aim of investigating the presence of nuclear accreting black holes (BHs) as those seed BHs from which supermassive BHs could grow…
Recent models of carbon ignition on accreting neutron stars predict superburst ignition depths that are an order of magnitude larger than observed. We explore a possible solution to this problem, that the compact stars in low mass X-ray…
While it is understood that the origin of the Cosmic X-ray Background (CXRB) can be explained in terms of a combination of obscured and unobscured AGN, the identity of these obscured AGN showing up in large numbers at faint fluxes remains…
We report the discovery of two sources at z=3.867 and z=3.427 that exhibit powerful starburst and AGN activities. They benefit from data from radio to X rays from the CFHTLS-D1/SWIRE/XMDS surveys. Follow-up optical and near-infrared…
We present X-ray observations of the ultraluminous infrared galaxy, UGC 5101, thought to contain a buried active galactic nucleus (AGN) based on observations in other wavebands. We detected an absorbed hard component at >3 keV, as well as…
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…
Nuclear hard X-ray luminosities (Lx,nuc) for a sample of 112 early type galaxies within a distance of 67 Mpc are used to investigate their relationship with the central galactic black hole mass Mbh, the inner galactic structure (using the…
The total energy emitted by the growth of massive black holes is large and can be 10-50 per cent of that emitted by stars in the universe. I show how the X-ray Background provides a good measure of this energy and also why most accretion…
We present X-ray observations of the nuclear region of 25 Fanaroff-Riley I radio galaxies from the 3CRR and B2 catalogs, using data from the Chandra and XMM archives. We find the presence of a X-ray Central Compact Core (CCCX) in 13/25…
We examine the radiatively driven mass accretion onto galactic nuclei due to the intensive radiation from circumnuclear starbursts. The radiation from a starburst not only contracts an inner gas disk by the radiation flux force, but also…
Observations of the Seyfert 2 and starburst galaxy NGC 7130 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory illustrate that both of these phenomena contribute significantly to the galaxy's detectable X-ray emission. The active galactic nucleus (AGN) is…
A significant fraction of nearby galaxies show evidence of weak nuclear activity unrelated to normal stellar processes. Recent high-resolution, multiwavelength observations indicate that the bulk of this activity derives from black hole…
We examine the spatial offsets between X-ray point sources and star clusters in three starburst galaxies. We find that the X-ray sources are preferentially located near the star clusters. Because the star clusters are very good tracers of…
Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are those X-ray sources located away from the centre of their host galaxy with luminosities exceeding the Eddington limit of a stellar-mass black hole ($L_X>10^{39}\;{\rm erg\,s}^{-1}$). The discovery of…
In many X-ray point sources on the sky, the X-ray emission arises because hydrogen and/or helium is accreted onto a neutron star from a nearby donor star. When this matter settles on the neutron star surface, it will undergo nuclear fusion.…
Thermonuclear X-ray bursts from the surface of accreting neutron stars are the most common astrophysical explosions in our galaxy. They provide a unique window into the physics of neutron stars, the physics of matter under extreme…
Chandra X-ray imaging spectroscopy of the starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 reveals a strong nuclear point source and at least two fainter compact sources embedded within a more luminous diffuse thermal component. Spectral fits to the nuclear…
Only a small fraction of galactic nuclei in the nearby universe are luminous; most of them are currently dim. We investigate the feasibility of constraining the X-ray luminosity in the recent past (up to ~10^6 years ago) of the nucleus of a…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are extragalactic X-ray emitters located off-center of their host galaxy and with a luminosity in excess of a few ${10^{39}\text{ erg s}^{-1}}$, if emitted isotropically. The discovery of periodic…