scholarly journals X-ray Flux and Spectral Variability of the TeV Blazars Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304

Galaxies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Alok C. Gupta

We reviewed X-ray flux and spectral variability properties studied to date by various X-ray satellites for Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304, which are TeV emitting blazars. Mrk 421 and PKS 2155-304 are the most X-ray luminous blazars in the northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. Blazars show flux and spectral variabilities in the complete electromagnetic spectrum on diverse timescales ranging from a few minutes to hours, days, weeks, months and even several years. The flux and spectral variability on different timescales can be used to constrain the size of the emitting region, estimate the super massive black hole mass, find the dominant emission mechanism in the close vicinity of the super massive black hole, search for quasi-periodic oscillations in time series data and several other physical parameters of blazars. Flux and spectral variability is also a dominant tool to explain jet as well as disk emission from blazars at different epochs of observations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 619 ◽  
pp. A95 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Chiaraluce ◽  
F. Vagnetti ◽  
F. Tombesi ◽  
M. Paolillo

Context. The well established negative correlation between the αOX spectral slope and the optical/ultraviolet (UV) luminosity, a by-product of the relation between X-rays and optical/UV luminosity, is affected by relatively large dispersion. The main contributors to this dispersion can be variability in the X-ray/UV ratio and/or changes in fundamental physical parameters. Aims. We want to quantify the contribution from variability within single sources (intra-source dispersion) and that from variations of other quantities different from source to source (inter-source dispersion). Methods. We use archival data from the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalog (XMMSSC) and from the XMM-OM Serendipitous Ultraviolet Source Survey (XMMOM-SUSS3). We select a sub-sample in order to decrease the dispersion of the relation due to the presence of radio-loud and broad absorption line objects, and that due to absorptions in both X-ray and optical/UV bands. We use the structure function (SF) to estimate the contribution from variability to the dispersion. We analyse the dependence of the residuals of the relation on various physical parameters in order to characterise the inter-source dispersion. Results. We find a total dispersion of σ ∼ 0.12 and find that intrinsic variability contributes 56% of the variance of the αOX − LUV relation. If we select only sources with a larger number of observational epochs (≥3) the dispersion of the relation decreases by approximately 15%. We find weak but significant dependencies of the residuals of the relation on black-hole mass and on Eddington ratio, which are also confirmed by a multivariate regression analysis of αOX as a function of UV luminosity and black-hole mass and/or Eddington ratio. We find a weak positive correlation of both the αOX index and the residuals of the αOX − LUV relation with inclination indicators, such as the full width at half maximum (Hβ) and the equivalent width (EW)[OIII], suggesting a weak increase of X-ray/UV ratio with the viewing angle. This suggests the development of new viewing angle indicators possibly applicable at higher redshifts. Moreover, our results suggest the possibility of selecting a sample of objects, based on their viewing angle and/or black-hole mass and Eddington ratio, for which the αOX − LUV relation is as tight as possible, in light of the use of the optical/UV – X-ray luminosity relation to build a distance modulus (DM)-z plane and estimate cosmological parameters.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (S324) ◽  
pp. 93-98
Author(s):  
S. Bradley Cenko

AbstractI present an overview of observational efforts across the electromagnetic spectrum to identify and study tidal disruption flares (TDFs), when a star wanders too close to a super-massive black hole and is torn apart by tidal forces. In particular I will focus on four unexpected surprises that challenge the most basic analytic picture of these events: 1) large inferred radii for the optical/UV-emitting material; 2) the ubiquity of outflows, detected at radio, X-ray, and UV wavelengths, ranging from speeds of 100 km/s to near the speed of light; 3) the peculiar atomic abundances observed in the UV and optical spectra of these objects; and, 4) the preference for these events to occur in post-starburst galaxies.


1994 ◽  
Vol 159 ◽  
pp. 489-489
Author(s):  
Evlabia Rokaki ◽  
Catherine Boisson

It is commonly admitted that AGN contain a massive black hole fuelled most likely by an accretion disc. Several spectral features of the AGN, as the continuum excess in the UV and the broad line spectrum, involving different physical processes of emission (thermal for the UV continuum, photoionisation for the line spectrum) have been proposed as signatures of the disc. Physical parameters of the nucleus (as the mass of the black hole, M, the disc inclination, i, and accretion rate, Ṁ) are better determined when these two spectral features are modelled simultaneously. Here, we present results from the disc modelling (see) of the UV and broad Hβ emission of the 22 Seyfert 1 galaxies in a complete AGN sample selected in a hard X-ray survey.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (S238) ◽  
pp. 429-430
Author(s):  
G. Ponti ◽  
M. Cappi ◽  
B. Czerny ◽  
R. W. Goosmann ◽  
V. Karas

AbstractPreliminary results of the study of the X-ray spectral variability of 12 Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies are presented. Rms spectra are calculated and compared for the whole sample to search for possible variations with black hole mass. A larger sample of AGN is under investigation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 214 ◽  
pp. 281-286
Author(s):  
Zhen Guo Ma ◽  
Xi Zhen Zhang

With the determined black-hole (BH) spin of 3C 273 by data-fitting to the detected iron Kα line emission in the soft X-ray band, the BH mass of the galaxy is predicted by formulations of both the observed disk-luminosity in the optical-UV band and the observed jet-precession in the radio band. The multiband synthesis suggests that the BH is supermassive, 2.4 × 109M⊙. Simultaneously, other physical parameters are self-consistently obtained at the precessing radius of 230.2rg: the accretion rate of the disk is 74.9M⊙ yr−1, the Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity α is 0.134, and the radial & orbital velocities of fluid elements are 4.3 × 10−8 and 6.6 × 10−2, respectively.


1998 ◽  
Vol 188 ◽  
pp. 388-389
Author(s):  
A. Kubota ◽  
K. Makishima ◽  
T. Dotani ◽  
H. Inoue ◽  
K. Mitsuda ◽  
...  

About 10 X-ray binaries in our Galaxy and LMC/SMC are considered to contain black hole candidates (BHCs). Among these objects, Cyg X-1 was identified as the first BHC, and it has led BHCs for more than 25 years(Oda 1977, Liang and Nolan 1984). It is a binary system composed of normal blue supergiant star and the X-ray emitting compact object. The orbital kinematics derived from optical observations indicates that the compact object is heavier than ~ 4.8 M⊙ (Herrero 1995), which well exceeds the upper limit mass for a neutron star(Kalogora 1996), where we assume the system consists of only two bodies. This has been the basis for BHC of Cyg X-1.


Author(s):  
Hajime Inoue

Abstract We investigate a mechanism for a super-massive black hole at the center of a galaxy to wander in the nucleus region. A situation is supposed in which the central black hole tends to move by the gravitational attractions from the nearby molecular clouds in a nuclear bulge but is braked via the dynamical frictions from the ambient stars there. We estimate the approximate kinetic energy of the black hole in an equilibrium between the energy gain rate through the gravitational attractions and the energy loss rate through the dynamical frictions in a nuclear bulge composed of a nuclear stellar disk and a nuclear stellar cluster as observed from our Galaxy. The wandering distance of the black hole in the gravitational potential of the nuclear bulge is evaluated to get as large as several 10 pc, when the black hole mass is relatively small. The distance, however, shrinks as the black hole mass increases, and the equilibrium solution between the energy gain and loss disappears when the black hole mass exceeds an upper limit. As a result, we can expect the following scenario for the evolution of the black hole mass: When the black hole mass is smaller than the upper limit, mass accretion of the interstellar matter in the circumnuclear region, causing the AGN activities, makes the black hole mass larger. However, when the mass gets to the upper limit, the black hole loses the balancing force against the dynamical friction and starts spiraling downward to the gravity center. From simple parameter scaling, the upper mass limit of the black hole is found to be proportional to the bulge mass, and this could explain the observed correlation of the black hole mass with the bulge mass.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S356) ◽  
pp. 143-143
Author(s):  
Jaya Maithil ◽  
Michael S. Brotherton ◽  
Bin Luo ◽  
Ohad Shemmer ◽  
Sarah C. Gallagher ◽  
...  

AbstractActive Galactic Nuclei (AGN) exhibit multi-wavelength properties that are representative of the underlying physical processes taking place in the vicinity of the accreting supermassive black hole. The black hole mass and the accretion rate are fundamental for understanding the growth of black holes, their evolution, and the impact on the host galaxies. Recent results on reverberation-mapped AGNs show that the highest accretion rate objects have systematic shorter time-lags. These super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs) show BLR size 3-8 times smaller than predicted by the Radius-Luminosity (R-L) relationship. Hence, the single-epoch virial black hole mass estimates of highly accreting AGNs have an overestimation of a factor of 3-8 times. SEAMBHs likely have a slim accretion disk rather than a thin disk that is diagnostic in X-ray. I will present the extreme X-ray properties of a sample of dozen of SEAMBHs. They indeed have a steep hard X-ray photon index, Γ, and demonstrate a steeper power-law slope, ασx.


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