Skip to main content

REVIEW article

Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Extragalactic Astronomy
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1530392

X-ray properties of coronal emission in radio quiet Active Galactic Nuclei

Provisionally accepted
Sibasish Laha Sibasish Laha 1,2*Claudio Ricci Claudio Ricci 3John Mather John Mather 1Ehud Behar Ehud Behar 4Luigi Gallo Luigi Gallo 5Frederic Marin Frederic Marin 6Rostom Mbarek Rostom Mbarek 2Amelia Hankla Amelia Hankla 2
  • 1 Sciences and Exploration Directorate, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, United States
  • 2 University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland, United States
  • 3 Diego Portales University, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
  • 4 Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Haifa, Israel
  • 5 Saint Mary's University, Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, Canada
  • 6 UMR7550 Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg (OAS), Strasbourg, Alsace, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are powerful sources of panchromatic radiation. All AGN emit in X-rays, contributing around 5 -10% of the AGN bolometric luminosity. The X-ray emitting region, popularly known as the corona, is geometrically and radiatively compact with a size typically ≲ 10 R G (gravitational radii). The rapid and extreme variability in X-rays also suggest that the corona must be a dynamic structure. Decades of X-ray studies have shed much light on the topic, but the nature and origin of AGN corona are still not clearly understood. This is mostly due to the complexities involved in several physical processes at play in the high-gravity, high-density and high-temperature region in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole (SMBH). It is still not clear how exactly the corona is energetically and physically sustained near a SMBH. The ubiquity of coronal emission in AGN points to their fundamental role in black hole accretion processes. In this review we discuss the X-ray observational properties of corona in radio quiet AGN.

    Keywords: keyword, active - galaxies, Black hole - X-rays, corona, supermassive Black Hole, Galaxies - active

    Received: 18 Nov 2024; Accepted: 23 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Laha, Ricci, Mather, Behar, Gallo, Marin, Mbarek and Hankla. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Sibasish Laha, Sciences and Exploration Directorate, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.