In this thesis I use X-ray observations to study the cores and extended structures of radio-loud AGN, to determine their structure, accretion properties and the impact they have on their surroundings. I use new Chandra data and archival XMM-Newton observations ofMarkarian 6 to look for evidence of emission from shocked gas around the external radio bubbles, using spatially resolved regions in Chandra and spectral analysis of the XMM data. The results show that the bubbles in Mrk 6 are indeed driving a shock into the halo of the host galaxy, with a Mach number of 3.9. I also find that the spectrum of the AGN has a variable absorbing column, which changes from 8 × 1021 atoms cm−2 to 3 × 1023 atoms cm−2 on short timescales (2-6 years). This is probably caused by a clump of gas close to the central AGN, passing in front of us at the moment of the observation. Using new and archival Chandra observations of the Circinus galaxy, I match them to pre-existing radio, infrared and optical data to study the kpc-scale emission. As for Mrk 6, I find that the radio bubbles in Circinus are driving a shock into the interstellar medium of the host galaxy, with Mach numbers M 2.7–3.6 and M 2.8–5.3 for the W and E shells respectively. Comparing the results with those we previously obtained for Centaurus A, NGC 3801 and Mrk 6, I show that the total energy in the lobes (thermal+kinetic) scales approximately with the radio power of the parent AGN. The spatial coincidence between the X-ray and edge-brightened radio emission in Circinus resembles the morphology of some SNR shocks, a parallel that has been expected for AGN, but has never been observed before. I investigate what underlying mechanisms both types of systems may have in common, arguing that, in Circinus, the edge-brightening in the shells may be accounted for by a B field enhancement caused by shock compression, but do not preclude some local particle acceleration. I also carry out a systematic study of the X-ray emission from the cores in the 0.02 < z < 0.7 2Jy sample, using Chandra and XMM-Newton observations. I combine the results with the mid-IR, optical emission line and radio luminosities, and compare them with those of the 3CRR sources, to show that the low-excitation objects in our sample show all the signs of radiatively inefficient accretion. I study the effect of the jet-related emission on the various luminosities, confirming that it is the main source of soft X-ray emission for our sources. I also find strong correlations between the accretion-related luminosities, and identify several sources whose optical classification is incompatible with their accretion properties. I derive the bolometric and jet kinetic luminosities for the sample and find a difference in the total Eddington rate between the low and high-excitation populations, with the former peaking at 1 per cent and the latter at 20 per cent Eddington. There is, however, an overlap between the two, indicating that a simple Eddington switch may not be possible. The apparent independence of jet kinetic power and radiative luminosity in the highexcitation population in our plots allows us to test the hypothesis in which jet production and radiatively efficient accretion are in fact independent processes that can coexist in high-excitation objects.

This thesis describes the results of the experimental investigations into some new geometrical configurations in plate-like structures materialising one-dimensional (1D) acoustic black holes for flexural waves (wedges of power-law profile) and two-dimensional (2D) acoustic black holes for flexural waves (circular indentations of power-law profile). Such acoustic black holes allow the user to reduce the amplitudes of the vibration responses of plate-like structures to a maximum effect, while not increasing the mass of the structures. This thesis also suggests some new real world practical applications for this damping technique. Initially, the effects of geometrical and material imperfections on damping flexural vibrations in plates with attached wedges of power-law profile (1D black holes) were investigated, demonstrating that this method of damping is robust enough for practical applications. Then, damping of flexural vibrations in turbofan blades with trailing edges tapered according to a power-law profile has been investigated. In addition, experimental investigations into power-law profiled slots within plates have been also conducted. Another important configuration under investigation was that of circular indentations (pits) of power-law profile within the plate. In the case of quadratic or higher-order profiles, such indentations materialise 2D acoustic black holes for flexural waves. To increase the damping efficiency of power-law profiled indentations, the absorption area has been enlarged by increasing the size of the central hole in the pit, while keeping the edges sharp. The next step of investigation in this thesis was using multiple indentations of power-law profile (arrays of 2D black holes). It was shown that not only do multiple indentations of power-law profile provide substantial reduction in the damping of flexural vibrations, but also a substantial reduction in radiated sound power. The experimental results have been obtained also for a cylindrical plate incorporating a central hole of quadratic profile. They are compared to the results of numerical predictions, thus validating the results and the experimental technique. Investigations into the effects of indentations of power-law profile made in composite plates and panels and their subsequent inclusion into composite honeycomb sandwich panels are also reported. These indentations again act as 2D acoustic black holes for flexural waves and they effectively damp flexural vibrations within the panels. It was also demonstrated that these indentations can be enclosed in smooth surfaced panels and that no additional damping layer is required to induce the acoustic black hole effect in composite structures. In conclusion, it has been confirmed in this thesis that one and two-dimensional acoustic black holes represent an effective method of damping flexural vibrations and reducing the associated structure-borne sound. Furthermore, this thesis has shown that acoustic black holes can be efficiently employed in practical applications, such as trailing edges of jet engine fan blades, composite panels, and composite honeycomb sandwich structures.

We investigate black hole-host galaxy scaling relations in cosmological simulations with a self-consistent black hole growth and feedback model. Our sub-grid accretion model captures the key scalings governing angular momentum transport by gravitational torques from galactic scales down to parsec scales, while our kinetic feedback implementation enables the injection of outflows with properties chosen to match observed nuclear outflows (star formation-driven winds are not included to isolate the effects of black hole feedback). We show that 'quasar mode' feedback can have a large impact on the thermal properties of the intergalactic medium and the growth of galaxies and massive black holes for kinetic feedback efficiencies as low as 0.1 per cent relative to the bolometric luminosity. None the less, our simulations indicate that the black hole-host scaling relations are only weakly dependent on the effects of black hole feedback on galactic scales, since black hole feedback suppresses the growth of galaxies and massive black holes by a similar amount. In contrast, the rate at which gravitational torques feed the central black hole relative to the host galaxy star formation rate governs the slope and normalization of the black hole-host correlations. Our results suggest that a common gas supply regulated by gravitational torques is the primary driver of the observed co-evolution of black holes and galaxies.

吀e so-called "trumpet" initial data has recently received mu挀 a琀ention as a potential candidate for the natural black hole initial data to be used in 3+1 numerical relativity simulations with 1+log foliation. In this work we first derive a variant of the maximal trumpet initial data that is made to move on the numerical grid by the means of a Lorentz boost and write a numerical code that constructs this boosted trumpet initial data. We also write a numerical code for calculating the Krets挀mann scalar from the 3+1 variables, to be used in analysing the data from our simulations. With the help of those two codes, we study the behaviour of the boosted trumpet initial data when evolved with the BSSN formulation of the Einstein equations, using 1+log slicing and the Γ-driver shi昀 condition.

In 2009 Bañados, Silk and West described the possibility of principally unbounded collision energies in the centre-of-mass frame for the particle collisions in the vicinity of black holes. Their work attracted a big response. This thesis aims to summarise the results of a number of the articles about the topic and puts these results into a new, broader context. It also presents some generalisations of the existing results, especially for models of magnetised black holes. The main subject of interest is the question, whether the unbounded collision energies can be achieved in a single-scattering or multiple-scattering process which was first formulated by Grib, Pavlov and Zaslavskii. Variety of methods is summarised. A considerable attention is paid to the limiting near-horizon description, which is further developed in order to derive new links and relations among known results, particularly between the purely theoretical work dealing with the geometry of degenerate horizons and their vicinity and more astrophysical articles about magnetic fluxes. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

All massive nearby galaxies, including our own, host supermassive black holes. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are seen when such black holes accrete, and when they produce powerful jets of synchrotron-emitting plasma, they are termed radio-loud AGN. The close correlation between black hole mass and galaxy bulge mass in elliptical galaxies indicates that AGN feedback may be the key to the regulation of galaxy formation. It is thus necessary to fully understand the structure of AGN, the way that they are fuelled, and their duty cycle, in order to study the feedback processes and get a clear picture of galaxy formation. In this thesis, independent methods are developed to constrain the accretion disk and radio jet angles to the line of sight. H IX emission from a sub-sample of high-redshift quasars is measured from near-infrared spectroscopy and modelled as sums of different components, including the characteristic double-peaked profile which results from a thin, rotating accretion disk. Comparing the models using Bayesian evidence, almost all quasars were found to have infrared spectra consistent with the presence of a disk. The jet inclination angles of the same set of quasars were constrained by fitting a model, including the effect of Doppler boosting and the receding torus model for dust obscuration, to the radio \ spectral energy distribution. The fitted disk and jet angles correlate strongly, and are consistent with a model in which the radio jets are launched orthogonally to the plane of the accretion disk, as expected if the jet is powered by energy drawn from the spin of the black hole. Both disk and jet angles correlate with the observed linear source size, which is a projection effect; when deprojected using the fitted angles, the distribution of source sizes agrees with a scenario in which the sources expand into the surrounding medium at a constant rate up to ~ 1 Mpc and then shut off, probably as the nuclei become quiescent. The accretion disk angle was found to correlate weakly with the low-frequency radio luminosity, which provides direct, albeit tenuous, evidence for the receding torus model.

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are now thought to exist at the center nearly all massive galaxies. Not only are they thought to be ubiquitous, but it was also discovered nearly two decades ago that the mass of these SMBHs correlate strongly with properties of their host galaxies including bulge stellar velocity dispersion (MBH-sigma) and bulge luminosity (MBH-Lbulge). This correlation was not expected due to the tiny size of the SMBH gravitational sphere of influence compared to the size of the host galaxy, and imply a connection between the two, but this connection is still not well-understood. One step toward understanding this connection is to accurately measure the masses of these black holes. Two of the most common direct SMBH mass measurement techniques are stellar dynamical modeling (SDM), which generally only applies to quiescent galaxies, and reverberation mapping (RM), which can only be applied to active galactic nuclei (AGN) that exhibit broadened emission lines. Due to the unknown geometry of the region that produces these broad lines, the whole RM sample of black hole masses generally needs to be multiplied by a constant called the f-factor to bring it into agreement with the SDM sample on the MBH-sigma relation. It is unknown how well this f-factor, being a population average, applies to individual RM masses. It would therefore be useful to measure an SMBH mass with both methods simultaneously to test whether they produce the same black hole mass. However, because the RM and SDM techniques usually apply to galaxies that are not possible for both, this has only been attempted twice before (NGC 3227 and NGC 4151). The purpose of this dissertation is to apply SDM to the SMBH at the center of NGC 6814 for which there already exists an RM mass. This makes it only the third broad-lined AGN for which an SDM mass has been derived. In order to perform SDM accurately, the distance to the galaxy needs to be well-constrained as the error in the SDM mass scales linearly with distance. Because no adequate distance measurements already exist, the first half of this dissertation is devoted to deriving a Cepheid distance to NGC 6814 from V- and I-band HST WFC3 time series photometry. We measure the distance to NGC 6814 to be 17.54 +1.44/-1.33 Mpc. In the second half, we incorporate that distance measurement into our stellar dynamical modeling on Gemini NIFS+Altair IFU data of NGC 6814's central 1.55''x1.55''. We derive a mass of 1.19 +37.57/-1.17 x108 solar masses, and best fit mass-to-light ratio of 0.948 +0.032/-0.208 in solar units. This mass is nearly an order of magnitude larger than the RM mass but has a 3-sigma range spanning nearly three orders of magnitude. We describe possible reasons for our larger-than-expected mass value, such as the existence of a bar, which would not be well-modeled by an axisymmetric dynamical code. Finally, we describe future steps that may be taken to better constrain the mass, such as creating more models to further explore parameter space.

The motion of a test particle in the Schwarzschild background models the merger of a compact object binary with extremely different masses known in the literature as Extreme Mass Ratio Inspiral. In the simplest geodesic approxima- tion, this motion is integrable and there is no chaos. When one takes the spin of the smaller body into account, integrability is broken and prolonged resonances along with chaotic orbits appear. By employing the methods of Poincaré surface of section, rotation number and recurrence analysis we show for the first time that there is chaos for astrophysically relevant spin values. We propose a uni- versal method of measuring widths of resonances in perturbations of geodesic motion in the Schwarzschild spacetime using action-angle-like variables. We ap- ply this novel method to demonstrate that one of the most prominent resonances is driven by second order in spin terms by studying its growth, supporting the expectation that chaos will not play a dominant role in Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals. Last but not least, we compute gravitational waveforms in the time- domain and establish that they carry information on the motion's dynamics. In particular, we show that the time series of the gravitational wave strain can be used to discern regular from chaotic motion of the source. 1

L’intérêt majeur des travaux exposés dans cette thèse est d’explorer la chevelure des trous noirs dans des cadres plus généraux que celui de la Relativité Générale en tenant compte de la présence d’une constante cosmologique, de dimensions supplémentaires, de champs de matière exotiques ou de termes de courbure de rang plus élevé. Ces extensions de la Relativité Générale peuvent s’inscrire dans le cadre de la théorie des cordes. C’est en étudiant des extensions naturelles de la Relativité Générale que nous pouvons aussi mieux comprendre la théorie d’Einstein. Dans un premier temps, nous exposerons la théorie de la Relativité Générale avec notamment les principes sur lesquelles elle s’appuie et nous donnerons les éléments mathématiques dont nous avons besoin pour la suite. Puis, une première extension sera présentée avec l’introduction de dimensions supplémentaires et de champs de p-formes qui constituent la généralisation naturelle de l’interaction électromagnétique. Nous construirons dans ce cadre de nouvelles solutions statiques de trous noirs où les p-formes permettent de modeler la géométrie de l’horizon. Nous exposerons ensuite l’extension la plus générale de la théorie d’Einstein en dimension quelconque qui génère des équations du second ordre en la métrique : la théorie de Lovelock. Nous déterminerons dans ce contexte une large classe de solutions en dimension 6 pour laquelle la théorie se réduit à celle d’Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet avec toujours la présence de p-formes. Enfin, nous étudierons une généralisation de la Relativité Générale en dimension 4 dont la modification est induite par un champ scalaire couplé conformément à la gravitation. Nous exhiberons notamment une nouvelle solution de trou noir avec un horizon plat dans cette théorie en présence de champs axioniques. Pour clore cette thèse, l’aspect thermodynamique de ces théories gravitationnelles sera étudié ; ce qui permettra de déterminer la masse et les charges de ces nouvelles solutions et d’étudier des phénomènes de transitions de phase en présence d’un champ scalaire conforme. / The main interest of the work exposed in this thesis is to explore hairy black holes in a more general framework than General Relativity by taking into account the presence of a cosmological constant, of higher dimensions, of exotic matter fields or of higher curvature terms. These extensions to General Relativity can be derived in the context of String Theory. It is also by studying natural extensions to General Relativity that we can more deeply understand the theory of Einstein. Firstly, we will display the theory of General Relativity with its building blocks in particular and we will give the mathematical tools that we need afterwards. Then, a first extension will be detailed with the introduction of higher dimensions and p-form fields which constitute the natural generalization of the electromagnetic interaction. We will build in this framework new static black hole solutions where p-form fields allow to shape the geometry of the horizon. Secondly, we will present the general extension of Einstein theory in any dimension which produces second order field equations: Lovelock theory. We will determine in this context a large class of solutions in dimension 6 for which the theory is reduced to Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory with the presence of p-form fields. Thirdly, we will study a generalization of General Relativity in dimension 4 whose modification is induced by a conformally coupled scalar field. We will namely exhibit a new black hole solution with a flat horizon in the presence of axionic fields. To conclude this thesis, thermodynamical aspects of these gravitational theories will be studied. In this way, we will be able to determine the mass and the charges of these new solutions and we will examine phase transition phenomena in the presence of a conformally scalar field.

The starting point of any general relativistic numerical simulation is a solution of the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints that (ideally) represents an astrophysically realistic scenario. This dissertation presents a new method to produce initial data sets for binary neutron stars with arbitrary spins and orbital eccentricities. The method only provides approximate solutions to the constraints. However, it was shown that the corresponding constraint violations subside after a few orbits, becoming comparable to those found in evolutions of standard conformally flat, helically symmetric binary initial data. This dissertation presents the first spinning neutron star binary simulations in circular orbits with a orbital eccentricity less then 0.01. The initial data sets corresponding to binaries with spins aligned, zero and anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum were evolved in time. These simulations show the orbital “hang-up” effect previously seen in binary black holes. Additionally, they show orbital eccentricities that can be up to one order of magnitude smaller than those found in helically symmetric initial sets evolutions. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.