Lunch talk on May. 11, 2020

AGN variability testing accretion disk theory in the era of time domain astronomy  

Speaker: Zhen-Yi Cai (USTC)

Venue: Video conference

Time: 12:30 PM, Monday, May 11, 2020

Abstract: 

I will briefly overview the main observational characteristics of AGN variability, including the interband correlations and lags among X-ray/UV/optical continua. These variation properties are usually understood within the widespread X-ray reprocessing scenario, however, several challenges against this scenario have been found. Instead, I will show that we in our recent works demonstrate that the AGN variability is probably attributed to disk turbulences using a fluctuating accretion disk model. Finally, further improvement on our scenario as well as the relative scientific goals of the Wide Field Survey Telescope jointly developed by USTC and PMO will be introduced.