Related papers: Do nuclear starbursts obscure the X-ray background…
When a neutron star accretes matter from a companion star in a low-mass X-ray binary, the accreted gas settles onto the stellar surface through a boundary/spreading layer. On rare occasions the accumulated gas undergoes a powerful…
X-ray appearance of normal galaxies is mainly determined by X-ray binaries powered by accretion onto a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole. Their populations scale with the star-formation rate and stellar mass of the host galaxy and…
Active galaxies are often associated with starbursts, which are possible sources of fuelling for the nuclear black holes. By means of optical (3500-7500 A) spectroscopic and narrow-band photometric data (H_alpha+[NII]6548,6583 and…
We report preliminary results from an arcsecond-resolution X-ray survey of nearby galaxies using ACIS on board Chandra. The total sample consists of 41 low-luminosity AGNs, including Seyferts, LINERs, and LINER/H II transition objects. In…
Hydrogen and helium accreted onto a neutron star undergo thermonuclear burning. Explosive burning is observed as a type I X-ray burst. We describe the different burning regimes and focus on some of the current inconsistencies between theory…
We have incorporated the description of the X-ray properties of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) into a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, adopting physically motivated scaling laws for accretion triggered by galaxy encounters. Our model…
We present the results of a search for nuclear X-ray activity in nearby galaxies using Chandra archival data in a sample of 62 galaxies from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxy Survey (SINGS). We detect 37 nuclear X-ray sources; seven of…
Nuclear reactions occurring deep in the crust of a transiently accreting neutron star efficiently maintain the core at a temperature >5e7 K. When accretion halts, the envelope relaxes to a thermal equilibrium set by the flux from the hot…
Integrated X-ray spectra of an evolving population of starburst galaxies (SBGs) are determined based on the observed spectra of local SBGs. In addition to emission from hot gas and binary systems, our model SBG spectrum includes a…
We study the obscuring structure of circumnuclear disks (CNDs) by considering supernova (SN) feedbacks from nuclear starburst and the effect of anisotropic radiative pressure from AGNs. We suppose that the mass accretion onto a central…
We summarise our recent work on the faint galaxy contribution to the cosmic X-ray background (XRB). At bright X-ray fluxes (in the ROSAT pass band), broad line QSOs dominate the X-ray source population, but at fainter fluxes there is…
Inspired by the excess soft X-ray emission recently detected in Green Pea galaxies, we model the soft X-ray emission (0.5 - 2.0 keV) of hot gas from star cluster winds. By combining individual star clusters, we estimate the soft X-ray…
We report evidence for a recent burst of star formation located within 9 pc of the active nucleus of NGC 1097. The observational signatures of the starburst include UV absorption lines and continuum emission from young stars observed in a…
More than half of all low-redshift AGN exhibit UV and X-ray absorption by highly ionized gas. The observed UV and X-ray absorption lines are almost always blue-shifted at velocities of hundreds of km/s, indicating that the absorbing gas is…
X-ray surveys have revealed a new class of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with a very low observed fraction of scattered soft X-rays, f_scat < 0.5%. Based on X-ray modeling these "X-ray new-type", or low observed X-ray scattering…
If cosmic ray protons interact with gas at roughly the mean density of the interstellar medium in starburst galaxies, then pion decay in starbursts is likely to contribute significantly to the diffuse extra-galactic background in both…
Nuclear starbursts may contribute to the obscuration of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The predicted star formation rates are modest, and, for the obscured AGNs that form the X-ray background at z < 1, the associated faint radio emission…
The cosmic history of the growth of supermassive black holes in galactic centers parallels that of star-formation in the Universe. However, an important fraction of this growth occurs inconspicuously in obscured objects, where…
High mass accretion rate onto strongly magnetised neutron stars results in the appearance of accretion columns supported by the radiation pressure and confined by the strong magnetic field of a star. At mass accretion rates above $\sim…
Disk accretion onto a neutron star possessing a weak surface magnetic field ($B \le 10^8$ G) provides interesting X-ray emission scenarios, and is relevant for understanding X-ray bursters and low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). The standard…