No Arabic abstract
We use the observed jet boundary transition from parabolic to conical shape, which was earlier discovered as possibly a common effect in active galactic nuclei, to estimate a black hole, a jet and an ambient medium parameters. We explained earlier the geometry transition as a consequence of a change in the jet inner properties: a transition from a magnetically dominated to an equipartition regime. This interpretation allows us to estimate a black hole spin, a black hole mass and an ambient pressure amplitude, using the observed jet shape break position and the jet width at the transition point for 11 active galactic nuclei. The black hole spin values obtained using our method are consistent with the lower estimates for the sources with redshift $z<2$ from the spin evolution modelling. We find that the method of a black hole mass determination based on the relation between the broad-line region size and its luminosity may underestimate masses of the sources with large jet viewing angles. We propose a new method for the black hole mass determination, with the obtained masses being in interval $10^8-10^{10};M_{odot}$. The range of the values of the ambient pressure amplitude points to the uniform medium conditions for the sources in our sample, with a tentative indication of higher pressure around FRII sources.
Compact steep-spectrum sources (CSSs) likely represent a population of young radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and have been identified as gamma-ray emitting sources. We present a comprehensive analysis of their gamma-ray emission observed with Fermi/LAT and establish their broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs). We derive their jet properties by the SED fits with a two-zone leptonic model for radiations from the compact core and large-scale extended region, and explore the possible signature of a unification picture of jet radiation among subclasses of AGNs. We show that the observed gamma-rays of CSSs with significant variability are contributed by the radiation of their compact cores via the inverse Compton process of the torus photons. The derived power-law distribution index of the radiating electrons is p_1~1.5-1.8, magnetic field strength is B~0.15-0.6 G, and Doppler boosting factor is delta~2.8-8.9. Assuming that the jet is composed of electron-positron pairs, the compact cores of CSSs are magnetized and have a high radiation efficiency, similar to that of flat spectrum radio quasars. The six CSSs on average have higher Eddington ratio and black hole mass than those non-GeV-detected CSSs, and they follow the correlation between the jet power in units of Eddington luminosity (P_jet/L_Edd) and Eddington ratio (R_Edd) with other sub-classes of AGNs, P_jet/L_Edd~R_Edd^0.52, indicating that R_Edd would be a key physical driver for the unification scheme of AGN jet radiation.
We study accretion environments of active galactic nuclei when a super-massive black hole wanders in a circum-nuclear region and passes through an interstellar medium there. It is expected that a Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton type accretion of the interstellar matter takes place and an accretion stream of matter trapped by the black hole gravitational field appears from a tail shock region. Since the trapped matter is likely to have a certain amount of specific angular momentum, the accretion stream eventually forms an accretion ring around the black hole. According to the recent study, the accretion ring consists of a thick envelope and a thin core, and angular momenta are transfered from the inner side facing to the black hole to the opposite side respectively in the envelope and the core. As a result, a thick accretion flow and a thick excretion flow extend from the envelope, and a thin accretion disk and a thin excretion disk do from the core. The thin excretion disk is predicted to terminate at some distance forming an excretion ring, while the thick excretion flow is considered to become a super-sonic wind flowing to the infinity. The thick excretion flow from the accretion ring is expected to interact with the accretion stream toward the accretion ring and to be collimated to bi-polar cones. These pictures provide a likely guide line to interpret the overall accretion environments suggested from observations.
Most results of the reverberation monitoring of active galaxies showed a universal scaling of the time delay of the Hbeta emission region with the monochromatic flux at 5100 A, with very small dipersion. Such a scaling favored the dust-based formation mechanism of the Broad Line Region (BLR). Recent reverberation measurements showed that actually a significant fraction of objects exhibits horter lags than the previously found scaling. Here we demonstrate that these shorter lags can be explained by the old concept of scaling of the BLR size with the ionization parameter. Assuming a universal value of this parameter and universal value of the cloud density reproduces the distribution of observational points in the time delay vs. monochromatic flux plane, provided that a range of black hole spins is allowed. However, a confirmation of the new measurements for low/moderate Eddington ratio sources is strongly needed before the dust-based origin of the BLR can be excluded.
In this paper, we review the prospects for studies of active galactic nuclei (AGN) using the envisioned future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). This review focuses on jetted AGN, which constitute the vast majority of AGN detected at gamma-ray energies. Future progress will be driven by the planned lower energy threshold for very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray detections to ~10 GeV and improved flux sensitivity compared to current-generation Cherenkov Telescope facilities. We argue that CTA will enable substantial progress on gamma-ray population studies by deepening existing surveys both through increased flux sensitivity and by improving the chances of detecting a larger number of low-frequency peaked blazars because of the lower energy threshold. More detailed studies of the VHE gamma-ray spectral shape and variability might furthermore yield insight into unsolved questions concerning jet formation and composition, the acceleration of particles within relativistic jets, and the microphysics of the radiation mechanisms leading to the observable high-energy emission. The broad energy range covered by CTA includes energies where gamma-rays are unaffected from absorption while propagating in the extragalactic background light (EBL), and extends to an energy regime where VHE spectra are strongly distorted. This will help to reduce systematic effects in the spectra from different instruments, leading to a more reliable EBL determination, and hence will make it possible to constrain blazar models up to the highest energies with less ambiguity.
We aim to constrain the evolution of AGN as a function of obscuration using an X-ray selected sample of $sim2000$ AGN from a multi-tiered survey including the CDFS, AEGIS-XD, COSMOS and XMM-XXL fields. The spectra of individual X-ray sources are analysed using a Bayesian methodology with a physically realistic model to infer the posterior distribution of the hydrogen column density and intrinsic X-ray luminosity. We develop a novel non-parametric method which allows us to robustly infer the distribution of the AGN population in X-ray luminosity, redshift and obscuring column density, relying only on minimal smoothness assumptions. Our analysis properly incorporates uncertainties from low count spectra, photometric redshift measurements, association incompleteness and the limited sample size. We find that obscured AGN with $N_{H}>{rm 10^{22}, cm^{-2}}$ account for ${77}^{+4}_{-5}%$ of the number density and luminosity density of the accretion SMBH population with $L_{{rm X}}>10^{43}text{ erg/s}$, averaged over cosmic time. Compton-thick AGN account for approximately half the number and luminosity density of the obscured population, and ${38}^{+8}_{-7}%$ of the total. We also find evidence that the evolution is obscuration-dependent, with the strongest evolution around $N_{H}thickapprox10^{23}text{ cm}^{-2}$. We highlight this by measuring the obscured fraction in Compton-thin AGN, which increases towards $zsim3$, where it is $25%$ higher than the local value. In contrast the fraction of Compton-thick AGN is consistent with being constant at $approx35%$, independent of redshift and accretion luminosity. We discuss our findings in the context of existing models and conclude that the observed evolution is to first order a side-effect of anti-hierarchical growth.