Uncovering The Nature Of Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources

Details Uncovering The Nature Of Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources Uncovering The Nature Of Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21343201f&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #432.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.298

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The nature of the ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) discovered by Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys of nearby galaxies remains highly controversial. Super-Eddington luminosities are inferred for ULXs from relatively precisely known galactic distances and suggest that ULXs may harbor the long-sought intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). Corroborating evidence that they are IMBHs arises from central mass estimates based on the observed X-ray spectral energy distribution; X-ray spectral fits with multi-color disk blackbody models yield black hole masses 10^3 solar masses. These fits, however, hinge on the noisiest part of the X-ray spectral data. In fact, the peak temperature of the inferred accretion disk is so low that it lies outside the observed energy range and requires arbitrarily high values for the absorbing hydrogen column density. We present detailed imaging and spectral analysis of six IMBH ULX candidates and find that they can be satisfactorily fit by models that do not require ultra-low temperature accretion discs, such as coronal accretion models. We therefore suggest that ULXs may instead be powered by an extreme form of "conventional" stellar-mass black holes.

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