AGN Variability interest group
Back to the eROSITA AGN working group
The purpose of this page is to serve as a data exchange for a loose groups of people interested in AGN variability, both spectral and flux.
For non-AGN & TDE, see TDA Science Projects.
People interested
- Johannes Buchner
- Mirko Krumpe
- Gabriele Ponti (TBC)
- Joern Wilms (TBC)
Please add your name!
Ideas for projects & papers
Add ideas, information and names where you are interested, so we can communicate and work together. This is still all in the pre-WG approval phase, so nothing is set in stone (e.g., w.r.t. leading projects). Mostly this is a collection of ideas.
- Blazar luminosity variability:
Science goals: Constraining jet models TDA_Projects_Wilms-blazarJets
- People interested: Joern Wilms (TBC), ...
- Data requirements: needs ...?
- Occultation on 6m-year timescales (absorption/spectral variability)
- Science goals: listed below
- People interested:
JohannesBuchner (statistical inference on torus/BLR granularity)
MirkoKrumpe (statistical inference on torus/BLR granularity, follow-up of behaviour of individual events for in-depth understanding, ...)
- Data requirements:
- needs second all-sky survey
- possibly first results can be done comparing to archives (RASS, 3XMM, CSC)
needs >10,000 sources, so small areas (<10 square degrees) are not effective.
- Occultation on day timescales (scanning stripe overlaps)
- Science goals:
- People interested:
- ...
- Data requirements: eRASS, eFEDS also ok?
- Extreme increases in AGN luminosity
- Science goals: a factor of 100x luminosity increase ("turn-on") enables dust reverberation mapping, i.e. constraining the torus geometry if followed up with infrared campaigns
- People interested:
- ...
- Data requirements:
- needs second all-sky survey, possibly first results can be done comparing to archives (RASS, 3XMM, CSC)
- Extreme decreases in AGN luminosity
- Science goals: a factor of 100x luminosity decreases ("turn-off") allow constraining the torus geometry through a clean view of the X-ray reflection spectrum. Requires follow-up with hard X-rays (NuSTAR), thus limited to (previously) bright sources.
- People interested:
- Data requirements:
- probably needs second all-sky survey to identify rapid decreases
- Tidal Disruption Events
flux variability as Black hole mass estimator & as standard candles
- People interested:
- Gabriele Ponti
- Andrea Merloni
- Kirpal Nandra
Barbara DeMarco
- ...
There is also eRosita/AGN_spectral_variability, feel free to integrate that here as specific science projects.
Work Products
- Johannes Buchner: MC Proposal for constraining torus granularity with 180d-2y eROSITA cadences (bright AGN) and CDF-S with advanced statistical methods (faint AGN)
- Mirko Krumpe: ...