Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era

By H. Feng, R. Soria. 2011

274 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are accreting black holes that may contain the missing population of intermediate mass black holes or reflect super-Eddington accretion physics. Ten years of Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of ULXs, integrated by multiband studies of their counterparts, have produced a wealth of observational data and phenomenological classifications. We review the properties of their host galaxies, list popular spectral models and implications for standard and supercritical accretion physics, demonstrate how X-ray timing of these objects places constraints on their masses. We also review multiwavelength studies of ULXs, including the optical emission of the binary system and nebulosity around them. We summarize that three classes of black holes could power ULXs: normal stellar mass black holes (∼10M⊙), massive stellar black holes (≲100M⊙), and intermediate mass black holes (102–104M⊙). We collect evidence for the presence of these three types of compact objects, including caveat of each interpretation, and briefly review their formation processes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3680398cde86e4bd5093d08337454240e777728e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. James M. Stone
2. S. Davis
3. M. Mezcua
4. L. Miller
5. F. Tombesi
6. T. Turner
7. M. Cappi
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In Instrumentation

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8. S. Davis

Citations in the corpus

• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes (2017, background): “Alternatively, they could be powered by stellar-mass BHs or magnetized neutron stars with near to super-Eddington accretion (e.g., see reviews by Feng & Soria 2011; Gladstone 2013; Bachetti 2015; Roberts et al. 2016; Kaaret et al. 2017).”
• On the maximum accretion luminosity of magnetized neutron stars: connecting X-ray pulsars and ultraluminous X-ray sources (2015, background): “Until recently one thought that either the intermediate mass black holes 102−105M⊙ (Colbert & Mushotzky 1999) or the super-critically accreting stellar mass black holes (e.g. Poutanen et al. 2007) are the most probable sources of such high X-ray luminosities (see review by Feng & Soria 2011).”
• A GLOBAL THREE-DIMENSIONAL RADIATION MAGNETO-HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATION OF SUPER-EDDINGTON ACCRETION DISKS (2014, background): “This has previously been interpreted as Comptonized emission from optically thick coronae with a commensurate range of temperatures (Gladstone et al. 2009; Feng & Soria 2011; Kawashima et al. 2012).”
• The Suzaku View of Highly Ionized Outflows in AGN. 1; Statistical Detection and Global Absorber Properties (2012, methodology): “Observations of non-AGN which were matched by virtue of their having a similar position to a known AGN on the sky, such as those of extragalactic ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs; Feng & Soria 2011) or X-ray bright supernovae, were systematically excluded.”
• The ultraluminous state revisited: fractional variability and spectral shape as diagnostics of super-Eddington accretion (2013, background): “In this case, many may be classic stellar mass black holes (sMBHs; MBH < 20 M ; Feng & Soria 2011), which would need to be accreting at superEddington rates to produce the observed luminosities.”