The Blandford-Znajek process, the steady electromagnetic energy extraction from a rotating black hole, is widely believed to work for driving relativistic jets, although it is still under debate where the electric current is driven. We address this issue analytically by investigating the time-dependent state in the Boyer-Lindquist and Kerr-Schild coordinate systems. This analysis suggests that a non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic region is required in the time-dependent state, while not in the steady state.

Compact binary mergers, with neutron stars or neutron star and black-hole components, are thought to produce various electromagnetic counterparts: short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) from ultra-relativistic jets followed by broadband afterglow; semi-isotropic kilonova from radioactive decay of r-process elements; and late time radio flares; etc. If the jets from such mergers follow a similar power-law distribution of Lorentz factors as other astrophysical jets then the population of merger jets will be dominated by low-Γ values. The prompt gamma-rays associated with short GRBs would be suppressed for a low-Γ jet and the jet energy will be released as X-ray/optical/radio transients when a shock forms in the ambient medium. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we study the properties of such transients as candidate electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave sources detectable by LIGO/Virgo. Approximately 78% of merger-jets result in failed GRB with optical peaks 14-22 magnitude and an all-sky rate of 2-3 per year.

We report a significant hardening of the Fermi-LAT gamma-ray spectrum from the core of Cen A at E > 2.4 GeV, suggesting there is a source of high energy particles in the core of Cen A which is in addition to the jet component. We show that the observed gamma-ray spectrum is compatible with either a spike in the dark matter halo profile or a population of millisecond pulsars. This work gives a strong indication of new gamma-ray production mechanisms in active galactic nuclei and could even provide evidence for the clustering of heavy dark matter particles around black holes.

The Lorentz factor (Γ) is an important parameter related to the relativistic jet physics. We study the evolution patterns of Γ within gamma-ray burst (GRB) and active galactic nuclear jets for individual GRB 090168, GRB 140508A, and 3C 454.3. By estimating the Γ values for well-separated pulses in GRBs 090618 and 140508A with an empirical relation derived from typical GRBs, we find that the Γ evolution pattern in the two GRBs are different. The increasing-to-coasting evolution pattern of Γ in GRB 090618 likely indicates that the GRB fireball is still being accelerated in the prompt phase. The clear decrease evolution pattern of Γ in GRB 140508A suggests the deceleration of the fireball components. By deriving the Γ value through fitting their spectral energy distribution in different flares of 3C 454.3, a pattern of Γ-tracking-γ-ray flux is clearly found, likely indicating that the observed gamma-ray flares are being due to the Doppler boosting effect to the jet emission.

The Cosmological Principle claims that in the large scale average the visible parts of the universe are isotropic and homogeneous. In year 1998 the author, together with his two colleagues, discovered that the BATSE’s short gamma-ray bursts are not distributed isotropically on the sky. This first discovery was followed by other ones confirming both the existence of anisotropies in the angular distribution of bursts and the existence of huge Gpc structures in the spatial distribution. All this means that these anisotropies should reject the Cosmological Principle, because the large scale averaging hardly can be provided. This was claimed in year 2009. The aim of this contribution is to survey these publications since 1998 till today.

We examine the 2008-2016 gamma-ray and optical light curves of a number of bright Fermi blazars. In a fraction of them, the periodograms show possible evidence of quasi-periodicities related in the two bands. This coincidence strengthens their physical meaning. Comparing with results from the periodicity search of quasars, the presence of quasi-periodicities in blazars suggests that the basic condition for its observability is related to the relativistic jet in the observer direction, but the overall picture remains uncertain.

About 100 AGNs have their black hole mass measured directly using the reverberation mapping technique over the past few decades. By now we have high enough numbers to explore unique subsamples within these objects and to study phenomena across variety of AGNs. I will review recent reverberation mapping studies which focus on high-redshift high-luminosity AGNs and on AGNs with super-Eddington accreting massive black holes. These studies enable to investigate the BLR size, mass, and luminosity relations in different subsamples of AGNs and to check whether there are differences in these relations in different types of AGNs. In particular I will discuss the following questions: Is the BLR size - luminosity relation the same over the whole AGNs luminosity range? Are there different relations for different types of AGNs? What are these studies teaching us about theory of accretion into black holes in AGNs?

We present the most up-to-date and complete multi-wavelength correlation analysis on luminosity properties of TeV BL Lacs. Correlation function (power law or linear) parameters are calculated based on linear regression method. Using the lower energy luminosities of a sample of 182 non-TeV BL Lacs and the generated functions, minimum level of VHE gamma-ray emission was calculated for each non-TeV BL Lacs. This multi wavelength prediction method gives us a list of best candidates to be observed with current generation of Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes.

The present work proposes a method to calculate the AGN magnetic luminosity fraction to be converted into ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) luminosities for nine UHECR AGN Seyfert sources based on the respective observation of gamma ray upper limits. The motivation for such calculation comes attached to the fact that a fraction of the magnetic luminosity (L B ) produced by Kerr black holes in some AGNs can produce the necessary energy to accelerate UHECRs beyond the GZK limit, observed, e.g., by the Auger experiment. Nevertheless, the direct detection of those UHECRs has a lack of information about the direction of the source from where those cosmic rays are coming, since charged particles are deflected by the intergalactic magnetic field. Such problem arises alternative methods to evaluate the luminosity of UHECRs from the observation of upper limits during the propagation.

Bosonic fields around a spinning black hole can be amplified via ‘superradiance’, a wave analogue of the Penrose process, which extracts energy and momentum from the black hole. For hypothetical ultra-light bosons, with Compton wavelengths on ≳ km scales, such a process can lead to the exponential growth of gravitationally bound states around astrophysical Kerr black holes. If such particles exist, as predicted in many theories of beyond Standard Model physics, then these bosonic clouds give rise to a number of potentially-observable signals. Among the most promising are monochromatic gravitational radiation signals which could be detected at Advanced LIGO and future gravitational wave observatories.

High energy photon radiations of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are dominated by their jet radiations. It was suggested that relativistic jets powered by different mass-scale black holes may share the same physical laws. A tight relation among the peak luminosity, the peak photon energy in the νf ν spectrum, and the initial Lorentz factor is found for GRBs. With samples of GeV-TeV BL Lacs, FSRQs, and NLS1 galaxies, we show that these sources do not follow this relation. This may be attributed to the jet geometry and continuous/episodic jet as well as radiation physics for different kinds of sources.

V404 Cygni went into an outburst again on June 15, 2015 after 26 years of quietness. Soon after the notifications, we started intense optical observation campaign of this source. The spectral index between RC and IC-band was stable over the outburst, whereas that between g′ and RC-band varied violently. With the time domain analysis of the multi-color optical light curves, we successfully decomposed optical variations into three components: highly-variable component (HVC), little-variable component (LVC). The loci of the LVC in the color-color diagram is consistent with that of a single temperature blackbody radiation or a multi-color blackbody radiation from a standard accretion disk, while those of the HVC trace that of power-law spectra.

A small fraction of Tidal Disruption Events (TDE) produce relativistic jets, evidenced by their non-thermal X-ray spectra and transient radio emission. Here we present milliarcsecond-resolution imaging results on TDE J1644+5734 with the European VLBI Network (EVN). These provide a strong astrometric constraint on the average apparent jet velocity βapp < 0.27, that constrains the intrinsic jet velocity for a given viewing angle.

We review the current observational and theoretical status of the polarization measurements of Gamma-ray Bursts at all wavelengths. Gamma-Ray Bursts are thought to be produced by an ultra-relativistic jet, possibly powered by a black hole. One of the most important open point is the composition of the jet: the energy may be carried out from the central source either as kinetic energy (of baryons and/or pairs), or in electromagnetic form (Poynting flux). The polarization properties are expected to help disentangling main energy carrier. The prompt emission and afterglow polarization are also a powerful diagnostic of the jet geometry.

We analyzed the light curves (LCs) of several radio-quiet and radio-loud quasars belonging to the same parameter space volume in the 4D Eigenvector 1 (4DE1) quasar sequence, using data from the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS). We report preliminary results on detected variability pattern, and discuss possible cases of periodic variability.

Hyperaccreting disks around black holes are the engines that drive outflows and jets in gamma ray bursts (GRBs). The torus formed after the core collapse or a compact binary merger is composed of free nucleons, Helium, electron-positron pairs, and is cooled by neutrinos rather than photon emission. Hyperaccretion powers the ultra-relativistic jets, where the GRB prompt emission originates. The neutrons produced in the disk and also in the outflowing material are necessary for the production of heavier nuclei. We discuss here the observable consequences of nucleosynthesis and we also apply the scenario of hyperaccretion to the gravitational wave source, GW150914. Temporal coincidence reported by the Fermi satellite suggested that the black hole merger might be accompanied with a GRB. We propose that a collapsing massive star and a black hole in a close binary could lead to such event. Gravitational wave emission due to the merger of collapsed core and the companion black hole might then coincide with a weak GRB.

We present KETJU, a new regularized tree code based on algorithmic chain regularization and implemented into Gadget-3. This new code is able to follow simultaneously galactic-scale dynamical and astrophysical processes and the small-scale supermassive black hole binary dynamics. We present here the general idea of this new code and show a test simulation of black hole binary dynamics in a galaxy merger of two massive elliptical galaxies. The separation of the black holes at the time of the merger is several orders of magnitude smaller in KETJU than when compared to ordinary Gadget-3 simulations. The merger timescale is also longer by 100 − 200 Myr.

According to the currently favored picture, relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are launched in the vicinity of the black hole by magnetic fields extracting energy from the spinning black hole or the accretion disk. In the past decades, various models from shocks to magnetic reconnection have been proposed as the energy dissipation mechanism in the jets. This paper presents a short review on how linear polarization observations can be used to constrain the magnetic field structure in the jets of AGN, and how the observations can be used to constrain the various emission models.

The formation of direct collapse black hole seeds with masses ~104 − 105 ~M⊙ could help explain the assembly of supermassive black holes powering high redshift quasars. Conditions conducive to the formation of these massive initial seeds exist at high redshift. Halos hosting these massive seeds merge promptly with a nearby galaxy. These early stage mergers at high redshift produce a new class of transient galaxies that contain an accreting black hole that is over-massive compared to the newly acquired stellar component - Obese Black hole Galaxies (OBGs). During this phase, the accretion luminosity of the direct collapse black hole seed exceeds that of the acquired stellar component. Here we calculate the multi-wavelength spectrum of this short-lived OBG stage, and show that there exist unique observational signatures in long wavelengths spanning near, mid to far-infrared that should be detectable by instruments aboard the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).