Title

Associate Professor

Education

Ph.D. Physics - University of Leciester (UK), 1988
B.Sc. Mathematics with Astronomy - University of Leicester (UK), 1984

Previous Experience

Dr. Turner worked previously for the Universities Space Research Association as an associate research scientist on base at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD). There she worked on several projects, including supporting guest observers for the ROSAT mission, and scientific time-line planning for the BBXRT instrument flown on shuttle mission STS 35.

Professional Interests

The AGN team work on the study of active galactic nuclei (AGN). While all galaxies are now thought to harbor million-billion solar mass black holes at their center, only a small fraction of these are actively accreting gas; this accretion process results in the release of a large amount of energy very close to the nuclear black hole leading to these being known as 'active' galactic nuclei. X-rays are produced very close to the black hole and thus studying AGN in the X-ray bandpass allows us a unique probe of accreting systems and of material in the strong gravity regime.

Our work at UMBC is focused on studying the X-ray spectra of AGN. The observed spectra are the sum of an X-ray continuum and reprocessed X-ray emission. The X-ray continuum likely arises from ultraviolet photons produced in the accretion disk that upscatter to X-ray energies in a plasma of relativistic electrons. Some of this X-ray continuum radiation shines back on to the accretion disk surface and 'reflects' from that, and all of the radiation travels through clouds of gas that shroud the nucleus before reaching the observer. These interactions of X-rays and material in the nucleus produce an imprint on the X-ray spectrum of many emission and absorption features that allow diagnostics to be made of these accreting systems. Our work currently concentrates on analysis and interpretation of data from the Chandra, XMM-Newton and Suzaku satellites although it also naturally includes consideration of the sources behavior across a wide bandpass of energy.

Selected Publications

The Suzaku view of highly ionized outflows in AGN - I. Statistical detection and global absorber properties, Gofford, Jason, Reeves, James N., Tombesi, Francesco, Braito, Valentina, Turner, T. Jane, Miller, Lance, Cappi, Massimo, 2013, ApJ, MNRAS 430, 60

Decoupling absorption and continuum variability in the Seyfert 2 NGC 4507, Braito, V., Ballo, L., Reeves, J. N., Risaliti, G., Ptak, A., Turner, T. J., 2013, MNRAS 428, 2516

The Global Implications of the Hard X-Ray Excess in Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei, Tatum, M. M., Turner, T. J., Miller, L., Reeves, J. N., 2013,  ApJ 762, 80 

Synthetic X-ray spectra for simulations of the dynamics of an accretion flow irradiated by a quasar, Sim, S. A., Proga, D., Kurosawa, R., Long, K. S., Miller, L., Turner, T. J., 2013, MNRAS 426, 2859

Direct Measurement of the X-Ray Time-delay Transfer Function in Active Galactic Nuclei, Legg, E., Miller, L., Turner, T. J., Giustini, M., Reeves, J. N., Kraemer, S. B., 2013, ApJ 760, 73

Modeling the Fe K Line Profiles in Type I Active Galactic Nuclei with a Compton-thick Disk Wind, Tatum, M. M., Turner, T. J., Sim, S. A., Miller, L., Reeves, J. N., Patrick, A. R., Long, K. S., 2012, ApJ 752, 94