Population X: Are the super-Eddington X-ray sources beamed jets in microblazars or intermediate mass black holes?

Details Population X: Are the super-Eddington X-ray sources beamed jets in microblazars or intermediate mass black holes? Population X: Are the super-Eddington X-ray sources beamed jets in microblazars or intermediate mass black holes?

2001-12-17

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0112385v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

A&A Letters, in press, LaTex, 4 pages, 2 figures, also available at http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/hfalcke/publications.ht

Scientific paper

10.1051/0004-6361:20011776

Recent X-ray observations reveal an increasing number of X-ray sources in nearby galaxies exceeding luminosities of L_x > 2 10^39 erg/s. Assuming isotropic emission, the Eddington limit suggests a population of intermediate-mass black holes of M_bh >> 10 M_sun. However, Markoff, Falcke, & Fender (2001) proposed that jets may be contributing to the X-ray emission from X-ray binaries (XRBs), implying that some X-ray sources may be relativistically beamed. This could reduce the required black hole masses to standard values. To test this hypothesis, we investigate a simple X-ray population synthesis model for X-ray point sources in galaxies with relativistic beaming and compare it with an isotropic emission model. The model is used to explain a combined data set of X-ray point sources in nearby galaxies. We show that the current distributions are consistent with black hole masses M_bh <=10 M_sun and bulk Lorentz factors for jets in microquasars of gamma_j ~ 5. Alternatively, intermediate mass black holes up to 1000 M_sun are required which are distributed in a powerlaw with roughly dN/dM ~ M^-2.

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