Jeremy Schnittman/NASA GSFC

X-ray Reverberation Mapping in Active Galactic Nuclei

In recent years, we have developed a new way to study the inner accretion flows around black holes, through an approach called X-ray reverberation mapping. Similar to optical reverberation, where light travel time delays of days or weeks map out kiloparsec scales in the Broad Line Region, X-ray reverberation reveals time delays of tens of seconds, which map out microparsec scales. This allows us to measure the effects of strongly curved space time close to the event horizon. 

Recent Papers:

• Kara et al., 2016. A global look at X-ray time lags in Seyfert galaxies. MNRAS  462 2016.