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Full-Text Articles in Other Astrophysics and Astronomy

Probing The Inner Structure Of Active Galactic Nuclei Through Reverberation Mapping, Viraja Chandrashekhar Khatu Jun 2022

Probing The Inner Structure Of Active Galactic Nuclei Through Reverberation Mapping, Viraja Chandrashekhar Khatu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the centres of massive galaxies, active galactic nuclei (AGN) are supermassive black holes, surrounded by an accretion disk of ionized gas, that release tremendous energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Because AGN are unresolved through telescopes, we employ reverberation mapping (RM) to study their structure. RM capitalizes on the fact that AGN are variable – the continuum emission from the accretion disk varies, and surrounding gas (in the broad-line region, BLR) responds to those variations with a positive time lag. RM translates the measured time lag into a size of the BLR. Combined with gas velocities (measured from …


Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Testing Ejecta Models For High Mass-Ratios, Allen Murray Aug 2020

Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Testing Ejecta Models For High Mass-Ratios, Allen Murray

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Neutron stars are extremely dense stellar corpses which sometimes exist in orbiting pairs known as binary neutron star (BNS) systems. The mass ratio (q) of a BNS system is defined as the mass of the heavier neutron star divided by the mass of the lighter neutron star. Over time the neutron stars will inspiral toward one another and produce a merger event. Although rare, these events can be rich sources of observational data due to their many electromagnetic emissions as well as the gravitational waves they produce. The ability to extract physical information from such observations relies heavily on numerical …


Fermi-Lat Daily Monitoring Observations Of The Microquasar Cygnus X-1, Austin P. Waldron, Stephen R. Hood, Arash Bodaghee Apr 2017

Fermi-Lat Daily Monitoring Observations Of The Microquasar Cygnus X-1, Austin P. Waldron, Stephen R. Hood, Arash Bodaghee

Georgia College Student Research Events

Detection of gamma-ray emission from microquasars is important for understanding particle acceleration in the jet, and for constraining leptonic/hadronic emission models. We present a continuation of a 1-d likelihood analysis on gamma-ray observations by Fermi-LAT (0.1-10 GeV) of the accreting black hole candidate Cygnus X-1. Combining this gamma-ray data with available X-ray monitoring data from Swift and MAXI allowed us to reveal over a dozen days (in 2008-2016) during which Cyg X-1 displayed low-significance (3-4 sigma) excesses, many of which were contemporaneous with apparent transitions in the X-rays.


Applying Hierarchical Clustering To Broad Absorption Line Profiles For Quasar Classification, Nathalie Chantal Marie Thibert Jan 2016

Applying Hierarchical Clustering To Broad Absorption Line Profiles For Quasar Classification, Nathalie Chantal Marie Thibert

2016 Undergraduate Awards

The region immediately surrounding an actively accreting supermassive black hole at the centre of a massive galaxy, the accretion disk, produces an enormous amount of radiation resulting in a luminous, short-lived phenomenon called a quasar. About 20% of quasars show broad, blue-shifted absorption features in their UV spectra, indicative of an outflowing wind from the accretion disk. These winds can remove angular momentum from the accretion disk, thereby contributing to the growth of the central black hole. Understanding these winds will help us to better constrain the details of how black holes grow during the quasar phase. The structures of …


Magnetic Fields In An Expanding Universe, David Kastor, Jennie Traschen Mar 2014

Magnetic Fields In An Expanding Universe, David Kastor, Jennie Traschen

David Kastor

We find a solution to 4D Einstein-Maxwell theory coupled to a massless dilaton field describing a Melvin magnetic field in an expanding universe with 'stiff matter' equation of state parameter w=+1. As the universe expands, magnetic flux becomes more concentrated around the symmetry axis for dilaton coupling a<1/3√ and more dispersed for a>1/3√. An electric field circulates around the symmetry axis in the direction determined by Lenz's law. For a=0 the magnetic flux through a disk of fixed comoving radius is proportional to the proper area of the disk. This result disagrees with the usual expectation based on a test magnetic field that this …


Ion Viscosity Mediated By Tangled Magnetic Fields: An Application To Black Hole Accretion Disks, P. Subramanian, P. A. Becker, Menas Kafatos Jan 1996

Ion Viscosity Mediated By Tangled Magnetic Fields: An Application To Black Hole Accretion Disks, P. Subramanian, P. A. Becker, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We examine the viscosity associated with the shear stress exerted by ions in the presence of a tangled magnetic field. As an application, we consider the effect of this mechanism on the structure of black hole accretion disks. We do not attempt to include a self-consistent description of the magnetic field. Instead, we assume the existence of a tangled field with coherence length λcob• which is the average distance between the magnetic "kinks" that scatter the particles. For simplicity, we assume that the field is self-similar, and take λcob to be a fixed fraction ξ of the local disk height …


Shock Study In Fully Relativistic Isothermal Flows. Ii, Ruixin Yang, Menas Kafatos Jan 1995

Shock Study In Fully Relativistic Isothermal Flows. Ii, Ruixin Yang, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The isothermal shocks and their stabilities in fully relativistic accretion wedge flows onto black holes are studied. The jump condition across the shock is modified by the relativistic effects when the sound speed is comparable to the speed of light. With a new kind of instability analysis, it is found that only one of the two possible shocks is stable. The results are applied to the QPO behavior in galactic black hole candidates such as Cygnus X-1.