• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.34.2-34.2
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• 2020

Reverberation mapping is one of the best ways to investigate the physical mechanism of broad-line regions around central supermassive black holes of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). It is usually used to estimate the masses of supermassive black holes. Although spectroscopic reverberation mapping has used to study dozens of AGN, spectroscopic monitoring campaign of large sample is expansive. Here, we present results of photometric reverberation mapping with medium-band photometry. We monitored five nearby AGN which were already studied with H-alpha emission line. Observation has been performed for ~3 months with ~3 days cadence using three medium-band filters installed in LSGT (Lee Sang Gak Telescope; 0.43m). We found 0.01-0.08 magnitude variations from differential photometry. Also time-lags between continuum light-curves and H-alpha emission line light-curves are found using JAVELIN software. The result shows that our study and previous studies are consistent within uncertainty range. In the near future, medium-band photometric reverberation mapping seems useful to study large AGN samples. We will present preliminary result of following study that report new time lag measurement of six AGNs in the similar way.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.71.2-71.2
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• 2021

Using multi-epoch spectra of active galactic nuclei (AGN) obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we identify 16 spectrally variable sources, for which the spectral shapes of broad emission lines significantly vary with a time scale of yrs. Out of them, 3 AGNs are already known as changing-look (CL) AGNs by previous studies. 6 AGNs are newly identified as CL AGNs from our study. A majority of these AGNs are relatively faint and their variability in the continuum is small, which may explain their non-detection in the previous studies. 7 sources are known as binary AGN candidates based on the systematic velocity offset between broad emission lines and narrow emission lines. For those sources and 3 CL AGNs, we find that the peak of broad emission lines had been shifted up to a few thousands km/s for ~10 years, implying that those can be promising candidates for pc-scale binary AGNs or recoiling black holes. We plan to conduct multiwavelength follow-up studies to nail down the physical origin of the velocity shift.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.285-286
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• 2012

We combine data from two all-sky surveys, the Swift/Burst Alert Telescope 22 Month Source Catalog and the AKARI Point Source Catalogue, in order to study the connection between the hard X-ray (> 10 keV) and infrared (IR) properties of local active galactic nuclei (AGN). We find two photometric diagnostics are useful for source classification: one is the X-ray luminosity vs. IR color diagram, in which type 1 radio-loud AGN are well isolated from other AGN. The second one uses the X-ray vs. IR color-color diagram as a redshift-independent indicator for identifying Compton-thick (CT) AGN. Importantly, CT AGN and starburst galaxies in composite systems can also be separated in this plane based upon their hard X-ray fluxes and dust temperatures. This diagram may be useful as a new indicator to classify objects in new surveys such as with WISE and NuSTAR.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.281-285
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• 2017

We present a summary of our spectroscopic redshift catalogue of 404 sources in the AKARI Deep Field South (ADF-S). We have used the AAOmega spectrograph to target mid-infrared and far-infrared sources selected primarily from AKARI observations in this field for which we were able to obtain optical counterparts. Our sources with identified redshifts include 316 with $H{\alpha}$ detections at $z{\leq}0.345$ and 15 sources at z > 1 with MgII or $Ly{\alpha}$ emission lines. About 13% of our $z{\leq}0.345$ sources are dominated by active galactic nuclei (AGN) emission, although many show emission from both star formation and AGNs. The median Balmer decrement is 5.9. Ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) were found only in the higher-redshift sources. Optical and near infrared data will be available shortly, enabling calibration of the line luminosities and spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting for these sources.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.189-191
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• 2017

We performed systematic observations of the H $\small{I}$ $Br{\alpha}$ line ($4.05{\mu}m$) in 51 nearby (z<0.3) ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), using AKARI near-infrared spectroscopy. The $Br{\alpha}$ line is predicted to be the brightest among the H ${\small{I}}$ recombination lines in ULIRGs with visual extinction higher than 15 mag. We detected the $Br{\alpha}$ line in 33 ULIRGs. In these galaxies, the relative contribution of starburst to the total infrared luminosity ($L_{IR}$) is estimated on the basis of the ratio of the $Br{\alpha}$ line luminosity ($L_{Br{\alpha}}$) to $L_{IR}$. The mean $L_{Br{\alpha}}/L_{IR}$ ratio in LINERs or Seyferts is significantly lower (~50%) than that in H $\small{II}$ galaxies. This result indicates that active galactic nuclei contribute significantly (~50%) to $L_{IR}$ in LINERs, as well as Seyferts. We also estimate the absolute contribution of starburst to $L_{IR}$ using the ratio of star formation rates (SFRs) derived from $L_{Br{\alpha}}$ ($SFR_{Br{\alpha}}$) and those needed to explain $L_{IR}$ ($SFR_{IR}$). The mean $SFR_{Br{\alpha}}/SFR_{IR}$ ratio is only 0.33 even in H $\small{II}$ galaxies, where starburst is supposed to dominate the luminosity. We attribute this apparently low $SFR_{Br{\alpha}}/SFR_{IR}$ ratio to the absorption of ionizing photons by dust within H $\small{II}$ regions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.57.2-57.2
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• 2014

Red active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are supposed to be transitional objects becoming normal AGNs in the galaxy evolution scenario. So far, ~200 red AGNs have been found by very red color in optical through NIR wavelength (e.g., r'-K >5 and J-K>1.3; Urrutia et al. 2009). Here, we compare nuclear activities of the red AGNs to those of normal AGNs to verify the evolutionary phase of the red AGNs. In order to study the nuclear activities of the red AGNs, we use broad emission lines of $P{\beta}$ ($1.28{\mu}m$) of which flux is less suppressed by a factor of 100 than the $H{\beta}$ line in the case of the red AGNs with a color excess of E(B-V)=2 mag. We use 16 red AGNs discovered in previous red AGN surveys by using SDSS, 2MASS, and FIRST (Glikman et al. 2007; Urrutia et al. 2009) at z ~0.7 for which $P{\beta}$ lines are redshifted to the sky window at ${\sim}2.2{\mu}m$. The mean Eddington ratio of the 16 red AGNs is 0.562, and that of the normal AGNs is 0.320, which indicates the red AGNs include more active black hole (BH) than the normal AGNs. To test how significantly the nuclear activities of the red AGNs and the normal AGNs are different, we perform a two-dimensional Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (K-S test) on their Eddington ratio distributions. The K-S test shows the maximum deviation between the cumulative distributions, D, is 0.48, and the probability of null hypothesis, p, is even less than 0.001. This result is consistent with a picture of that the red AGNs are in intermediate phase between the stage of merger-driven starburst galaxy and the normal AGN.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.313-323
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• 2015

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are known for irregular variability on all time scales, down to intra-day variability with relative variations of a few percent within minutes to hours. On such short timescales, unexplored territory, such as the possible existence of a shortest characteristic time scale of activity and the shape of the high frequency end of AGN power spectra, still exists. We present the results of AGN single-dish fast photometry performed with the Korean VLBI Network (KVN). Observations were done in a “anti-correlated” mode using two antennas, with always at least one antenna pointing at the target. This results in an effective time resolution of less than three minutes. We used all four KVN frequencies, 22, 43, 86, and 129 GHz, in order to trace spectral variability, if any. We were able to derive high-quality light curves for 3C 111, 3C 454.3, and BL Lacertae at 22 and 43 GHz, and for 3C 279 at 86 GHz, between May 2012 and April 2013. We performed a detailed statistical analysis in order to assess the levels of variability and the corresponding upper limits. We found upper limits on flux variability ranging from ~1.6% to ~7.6%. The upper limits on the derived brightness temperatures exceed the inverse Compton limit by three to six orders of magnitude. From our results, plus comparison with data obtained by the University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory, we conclude that we have not detected source-intrinsic variability which would have to occur at sub-per cent levels.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.299-311
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• 2015

We report first results from KVN and VERA Array (KaVA) VLBI observations obtained in the frame of our Plasma-physics of Active Galactic Nuclei (PAGaN) project. We observed eight selected AGN at 22 and 43 GHz in single polarization (LCP) between March 2014 and April 2015. Each source was observed for 6 to 8 hours per observing run to maximize the uv coverage. We obtained a total of 15 deep high-resolution images permitting the identification of individual circular Gaussian jet components and three spectral index maps of BL Lac, 3C 111 and 3C 345 from simultaneous dual-frequency observations. The spectral index maps show trends in agreement with general expectations – flat core and steep jets – while the actual value of the spectral index for jets shows indications for a dependence on AGN type. We analyzed the kinematics of jet components of BL Lac and 3C 111, detecting superluminal proper motions with maximum apparent speeds of about 5c. This constrains the lower limits of the intrinsic component velocities to ~ 0.98c and the upper limits of the angle between jet and line of sight to ~20°. In agreement with global jet expansion, jet components show systematically larger diameters d at larger core distances r, following the global relation d ≈ 0.2r, albeit within substantial scatter.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.41.1-41.1
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• 2014

Although the link between activity in the nuclei of galaxy and galactic mergers has been under scrutiny for several years, it is still unclear to what extent and for which populations of active galaxies merger-triggered activity is relevant. The environment of AGN allows an indirect probe of the past merger history and future merger probability of these systems, suffering less from sensitivity issues while extending to higher redshifts, compared to traditional morphological studies of AGN host galaxies. Here we present results from our investigation of the environment of radio selected sources out to redshift z=2. We employ the first data release J-band catalog from the new near-IR Infrared Medium-Deep Survey (IMS) and 1.4 GHz radio data from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST) survey and a deep dedicated VLA survey of the VIMOS field, covering a combined total of ~20 sq. degrees. Given the flux limit of the combined radio catalog (0.1 mJy), we probe a radio luminosity range of 10^36-10^44 erg/s. Using the second and fifth closest neighbor density parameters, we test whether active galaxies inhabit denser environments and study these overdensities in terms of both distance to the AGN and its luminosity. We find evidence for a sub-population of radio-selected AGN that resides in significantly overdense environments at small scales, although we do not find significant overdensities for the bulk of our sample. We do not recover any dependence between the AGN radio-luminosity and overdensities. We show that radio-AGN inhabiting the most underdense environments in the field have vigorous ongoing star formation. We interpret these results in terms of the triggering and fuelling mechanism of radio-AGN.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.37-57
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• 2022

Using I-band images of 35 nearby (z < 0.1) type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) obtained with Hubble Space Telescope, selected from the 70-month Swift-BAT X-ray source catalog, we investigate the photometric properties of the host galaxies. With a careful treatment of the point-spread function (PSF) model and imaging decomposition, we robustly measure the I-band brightness and the effective radius of bulges in our sample. Along with black hole (BH) mass estimates from single-epoch spectroscopic data, we present the relation between BH mass and I-band bulge luminosity (M_BH-M_I,bul relation) of our sample AGNs. We find that our sample lies offset from the M_BH-M_I,bul relation of inactive galaxies by 0.4 dex, i.e., at a given bulge luminosity, the BH mass of our sample is systematically smaller than that of inactive galaxies. We also demonstrate that the zero point offset in the M_BH-M_I,bul relation with respect to inactive galaxies is correlated with the Eddington ratio. Based on the Kormendy relation, we find that the mean surface brightness of ellipticals and classical bulges in our sample is comparable to that of normal galaxies, revealing that bulge brightness is not enhanced in our sample. As a result, we conclude that the deviation in the M_BH-M_I,bul relation from inactive galaxies is possibly because the scaling factor in the virial BH mass estimator depends on the Eddington ratio.