The Nature of Ultraluminous Compact X-Ray Sources in Nearby Spiral Galaxies

By K. Makishima, Aya Kubota, T. Mizuno, T. Ohnishi, M. Tashiro, Y. Aruga, K. Asai, T. Dotani, K. Mitsuda, Y. Ueda and 5 more. 2000

425 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Studies were made of ASCA spectra of seven ultraluminous compact X-ray sources in nearby spiral galaxies: M33 X-8, M81 X-6, IC 342 source 1, Dwingeloo 1 X-1, NGC 1313 source B, and two sources in NGC 4565. With the 0.5-10 keV luminosities in the range 1039-1040 ergs s-1, they are thought to represent a class of enigmatic X-ray sources often found in spiral galaxies. For some of them, the ASCA data are newly processed or the published spectra are reanalyzed. For others, the published results are quoted. The ASCA spectra of all seven sources have been described successfully with so-called multicolor disk blackbody emission arising from optically thick standard accretion disks around black holes. Except for the case of M33 X-8, the spectra do not exhibit hard tails. For the source luminosities not to exceed the Eddington limits, the black holes are inferred to have rather high masses, up to ~100 M☉. However, the observed innermost disk temperatures of these objects, Tin = 1.1-1.8 keV, are too high to be compatible with the required high black hole masses, as long as the standard accretion disks around Schwarzschild black holes are assumed. Similarly high disk temperatures are also observed from two Galactic transients with superluminal motions, GRO 1655-40 and GRS 1915+105. The issue of unusually high disk temperature may be explained by the black hole rotation, which makes the disk get closer to the black hole and hence hotter.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e53c632f989ec50be8e31ef3c82578bc46fef8a7

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

X-Ray Properties of LINERs and Low-Luminosity Seyfert Galaxies Observed with ASCA. I. Observations and Results (2002, background): “Mizuno et al. (1999) interpreted that both sources are luminous accreting black hole binaries (see also Makishima et al. 2000).”
Production of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters (2001, background): “For example, we note that the Galactic microquasars GRS 1915+105 and GRO J165540 have significantly harder emission than would be expected from a simple multicolour blackbody (Makishima et al. 2000).”
Large-Amplitude X-Ray Outbursts from Galactic Nuclei: A Systematic Survey using ROSAT Archival Data (2002, neutral): “For the purpose of excluding the most X-ray luminous young supernova remnants andX-raybinaries fromour survey (e.g., Schlegel 1995; Makishima et al. 2000), we have also defined aminimumoutburst X-ray luminosity threshold of 1 1041 ergs s 1.”
X-ray Source Populations in Galaxies (2003, background): “…ULX emission in some cases (e.g Fabian & Terlevich 1996), there is now sufficient evidence from spectral and variability data, to establish that the majority ULXs are indeed compact systems, most likely accreting binaries (e. g., Makishima et al. 2000; Kubota et al. 2001; La Parola et al. 2001).”
X-Ray Spectroscopic Evidence for Intermediate-Mass Black Holes: Cool Accretion Disks in Two Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources (2002, methodology): “These temperatures also differ considerably from those measured with single-component fits with the MCD model to the spectra of some ULXs, which approachkT ’ 2 keV (e.g., Makishima et al. 2000).”
On the formation and evolution of black hole binaries (2002, background): “This may be important for modelling the jets and the emission from the inner parts of the accretion disc (e.g. Zhang, Cui & Chen 1997; Makishima et al. 2000).”
Intermediate - mass black holes (2003, methodology): “Multiple stellar orbits have been tracked around the ∼ 3× 106 M⊙ black hole in the center of our Galaxy (e.g., Eckart & Genzel 1996; Ghez et al. 1998; Ghez et al. 2000; Eckart et al. 2002; Schödel et al. 2002; Ghez et al. 2003a,b), following up earlier observations of gas motion in the Galactic cen”
Slim-Disk Model for Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources (2000, methodology): “As was stated in Makishima et al. (2000), bolometric luminosity of the accretion disk is determined by the observational physical quantities, 22 24y T /Tcol eff38L p 7.2 # 10bol ( ) ( )0.41 1.7 2 2 4R M Tin in 21# ergs s .”
Chandra Observations of “The Antennae” Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039). III. X-Ray Properties and Multiwavelength Associations of the X-Ray Source Population (2002, methodology): “Adopting the power-law + Raymond-Smith + disk-BB model, the best-fit parameters are consistent with those of other ULXs (e.g., Makishima et al. 2000; La Parola et al. 2001; Kubota et al. 2001).”
Massive Black Holes in Star Clusters. II. Realistic Cluster Models (2004, background): “X-ray observations of starburst and interacting galaxies have revealed a class of ultra-luminous Xray sources (ULX), whose luminosities exceed the Eddington luminosities of stellar mass black holes by orders of magnitude (Makishima et al. 2000), making them good candidates for IMBHs.”
Supercritically accreting stellar mass black holes as ultraluminous X-ray sources (2006, background): “…anti-correlation between luminosity and temperature contradicts theL ∝ T 4 law expected for standard accretion discs (Feng & Kaaret 2007) and some ULXs show a harder, 1–4 keV c© 2007 RAS thermal component with the corresponding radius of only 30–40 km (Makishima et al. 2000; Stobbart et al. 2006).”
A Fundamental plane of black hole activity (2003, background): “…space we would expect to find intermediate mass black holes, if they exist, and specifically, where we would expectUltraLuminous X-ray sources (ULX; Makishima et al. 2000) based on their X-ray flux, should they be intermediate mass black holes, as opposed to intrinsically beamed low mass black…”
Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources in External Galaxies (2001, background): “We note immediately that some ingenuity is required (cf Makishima et al., 2000) to make these masses compatible with the characteristic observed X–ray temperatures 1 – 2 keV, whereas these are natural values for the lower masses we shall find below for beamed models.”
The Chandra Deep Field-South: Optical Spectroscopy. I. (2003, background): “…and XID 514 (TGS 243Z010), have hard spectra, luminosities LX(0:5 10 keV) 1040 ergs s 1, and are offcentered within the parent galaxy: these properties are similar to those of the brighter, ultraluminous compact X-ray sources (ULXs) detected in nearby spiral galaxies (Makishima et al. 2000).”
The Ultraluminous State (2009, background): “There are occasional spectra from BHBs at the highest luminosities which are indeed better described by optically-thick Comptonisation (GRO J1655-40 and GRS 1915+105: Makishima et al. 2000; Middleton et al. 2006; Ueda et al. 2009).”
Ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2011, background): “The high temperature and luminosity may be explained by large BH spin (Makishima et al. 2000), but this does not work for extreme cases where relatively small BH mass is required, which in turn is inconsistent with the observed high luminosity.”
GLOBAL STRUCTURE OF THREE DISTINCT ACCRETION FLOWS AND OUTFLOWS AROUND BLACK HOLES FROM TWO-DIMENSIONAL RADIATION-MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS (2011, background): “…been discussed over the past decade: subcritical accretion onto intermediate-mass black holes with the black hole mass greatly exceeding 100M⊙ (e.g., Makishima et al. 2000; Miller et al. 2004) and supercritical accretion onto stellar-mass black holes with mass of 3 − 20M⊙ (e.g., King et al. 2001;…”