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Related papers: Obscuration model of Variability in AGN

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Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of the broad-band continuum emission from black-hole accretion discs can serve as a tool to measure parameters of the central body and constrain the geometry of the inner accretion flow. We focus on the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-06-21 Marcel Štolc , Michal Zajaček , Bożena Czerny , Vladimír Karas

In the past decade, Swift has performed several AGN high-cadence reverberation mapping campaigns, and generally found that the UV/optical interband lags are $\sim$3 times longer than predicted for a standard thin disk, thus coined "the…

As a class, LINERs and Low-Luminosity AGN tend to show little or no significant short-term variability (i.e., with time-scales less than a day). This is a marked break for the trend of increased variability in Seyfert 1 galaxies with…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 A. Ptak , T. Yaqoob , R. Mushotzky , P. Serlemitsos , R. Griffiths

The physical origin of optical changing-look AGNs (CLAGNs), characterized by the appearance or disappearance of broad emission lines, is thought to be mainly driven by the variation of the black-hole (BH) accretion rate. In this work, we…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-15 Pengyuan Han , Huaiyuan Lu , Bing Lyu , Jiancheng Wu , Qingwen Wu

We argue that the X-ray and UV flux illuminating the parsec-scale accretion disk around luminous active galactic nuclei (AGN) is super-Eddington with respect to the local far-infrared dust opacity. The far infrared opacity may be larger…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-02-11 P. Chang , E. Quataert , N. Murray

Some of the accreting black holes exhibit much stronger variability patterns than the usual stochastic variations. Radiation pressure instability is one of the proposed mechanisms which could account for this effect. We aim to model…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-03-29 Marzena Śniegowska , Mikołaj Grzędzielski , Bożena Czerny , Agnieszka Janiuk

Theory and observations of the dominant thermal continuum emission in AGNs are examined. After correction for reddening, the steady state AGN optical--UV spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are very similar. The SEDs are dominated…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-11-15 C. Martin Gaskell

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), such as Seyfert galaxies, quasars, etc., show light variations in all wavelength bands, with various amplitude and in many time scales. The variations usually look erratic, not periodic nor purely random. Many…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-28 Chatief Kunjaya , Putra Mahasena , Kiki Vierdayanti , Stefani Herlie

The role of star-formation driven outflows in the obscuration of the central source in the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is discussed. The outflow from a sub-parsec scale accretion disc is numerically modelled for parameters appropriate to…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Sergei Nayakshin , Jorge Cuadra

The unified model of active galactic nuclei (AGN) includes a toroidal obscuring structure to explain the differences between Type I and Type II AGN as an effect of inclination angle. This toroidal structure is thought to be 'clumpy' as the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-01-19 Isaiah Cox , Nuria Torres-Alba , Stefano Marchesi , Xiurui Zhao , Marco Ajello , Andrealuna Pizzetti , Ross Silver

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have long been observed to "twinkle" (i.e., their brightness varies with time) on timescales from days to years in the UV/optical bands. Such AGN UV/optical variability is essential for probing the physics of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-03-24 Mouyuan Sun , Yongquan Xue , W. N. Brandt , Wei-Min Gu , Jonathan R. Trump , Zhenyi Cai , Zhicheng He , Da-bin Lin , Tong Liu , Junxian Wang

We study the optical variability characteristics of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) from the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) AGN catalogue by utilising approximately five years of optical light curves from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-12 Vivek Kumar Jha , Debbijoy Bhattacharya , Hum Chand

The characteristic timescale at which the variability of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) turns from red noise to white noise can probe the accretion physics around supermassive black holes (SMBHs). A number of works have studied the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-09-17 Guowei Ren , Shuying Zhou , Mouyuan Sun , Yongquan Xue

We investigate the properties of a variability-selected complete sample of AGN in order to identify the mechanisms which cause large amplitude X-ray variability on time scales of years. A complete sample of 24 sources was constructed, from…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-08-09 N. L. Strotjohann , R. D. Saxton , R. L. C. Starling , P. Esquej , A. M. Read , P. A. Evans , G. Miniutti

The characteristic timescale ($\tau$) of continuum variability of the accretion disk in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is known to be related to the thermal timescale, which is predicted to scale with AGN luminosity ($L$) and restframe…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-03-26 Suyeon Son , Minjin Kim , Luis C. Ho

The accretion flow in AGN is not well understood, motivating intensive monitoring campaigns of multiwavelength variability to probe its structure. One of the best of these is the 3 year optical/UV/X-ray approximately daily monitoring…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-05 Scott Hagen , Chris Done , Edward M. Cackett , Ethan R. Partington , Rick Edelson , Collin Lewin , Erin Kara , Jonathan Gelbord

The supermassive black hole in the center of our Galaxy, Sgr A*, is unique because the angular size of the black hole is the largest in the sky thus providing detailed boundary conditions on, and much less freedom for, accretion flow…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 Feng Yuan

It is commonly believed that accretion discs are truncated and their inner regions are described by advection dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) in the hard spectral state of black hole X-ray binaries. However, the increasing occurrence of a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-11-09 Yilong Wang , Bifang Liu , Erlin Qiao , Huaqing Cheng

We present a model that explains some extreme variability phenomena observed in active galactic nuclei (AGN). In this model, an orbiting companion interacts with the accretion disk surrounding the central supermassive black hole (SMBH).…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-06-26 Sierra A. Dodd , Xiaoshan Huang , Shane W. Davis , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 K. F. Gunn , T. Shanks