Magnetic reconnection: flares and coronal heating in Active Galactic Nuclei

A magnetically–structured accretion disk corona, generated by buoyancy instability in the disk, can account for observations of flare–like events in Active Galactic Nuclei. We examine how Petschek magnetic reconnection, associated with MHD turbulence, can result in a violent release of energy and heat the magnetically closed regions of the corona up to canonical X-ray emitting temperatures. X-ray magnetic flares, the after effect of the energy released in slow shocks, can account for the bulk of the X-ray luminosity from Seyfert galaxies and consistently explain the observed short–timescale variability.