The observed relation between the X-ray radiation from AGNs, originating in the corona, and the optical/UV radiation from the disk is usually described by the anticorrelation between the UV to X-ray slope alpha_ox and the UV luminosity. Many factors can affect this relation, including: enhanced X-ray emission associated with the jets of radio-loud AGNs; X-ray absorption associated with the UV Broad Absorption Line (BAL) outflows; other X-ray absorption not associated with BALs; intrinsic X-ray weakness; UV and X-ray variability, and non-simultaneity of UV and X-ray observations. The separation of these effects provides information about the intrinsic alpha_ox-L_UV relation and its dispersion, constraining models of disk-corona coupling. We extract simultaneous data from the second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue and the XMM-Newton Optical Monitor Serendipitous UV Source Survey Catalog, and derive the single-epoch alpha_ox indices. We use ensemble structure functions to analyse multi-epoch data. We confirm the anticorrelation of alpha_ox with L_UV, and do not find any evidence of a dependence of alpha_ox on z. The dispersion in our simultaneous data (0.12) is not significantly smaller than in previous non-simultaneous studies, suggesting that "artificial alpha_ox variability" introduced by non-simultaneity is not the main cause of dispersion. "Intrinsic alpha_ox variability", i.e., the true variability of the X-ray to optical ratio, is instead important, and accounts for ~30% of the total variance, or more. "Inter-source dispersion", due to intrinsic differences in the average alpha_ox values from source to source, is also important. The dispersion introduced by variability is mostly caused by the long timescale variations, which are expected to be driven by the optical variations.
Spectropolarimetric efforts in the last few years have provided an efficient method that is based on the profiles of the polarization plane position angle of broad emission lines in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Here we present black hole measurements of SBS 1419+538 using spectropolarimetric observations in the Mg II spectral band. The observations are performed by 6m telescope of SAO RAS using SCORPIO-2. We found a good agreement for the estimated supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass for this object using spectropolarimetry when compared with the mass obtained using other methods.
The perfect case for time-domain investigations are active galactic nuclei (AGNs) since they are luminous objects that show strong variability. Key result from the studies of AGNs variability is the estimated mass of a supermassive black hole (SMBH), which resides in the center of an AGN. Moreover, the spectral variability of AGN can be used to study the structure and physics of the broad line region, which in general can be hardly directly observed. Here we review the current status of AGNs variability investigations in Serbia, in the perspectives of the present and future monitoring campaign…
