English

Radio Detections During Two State Transitions of the Intermediate Mass Black Hole HLX-1

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2013-11-28 v1

Abstract

Relativistic jets are streams of plasma moving at appreciable fractions of the speed of light. They have been observed from stellar mass black holes (\sim3-20 solar masses, M_\odot) as well as supermassive black holes (\sim106^6-109^9 M_\odot) found in the centres of most galaxies. Jets should also be produced by intermediate mass black holes (\sim102^2-105^5 M_\odot), although evidence for this third class of black hole has until recently been weak. We report the detection of transient radio emission at the location of the intermediate mass black hole candidate ESO 243-49 HLX-1, which is consistent with a discrete jet ejection event. These observations also allow us to refine the mass estimate of the black hole to be between \sim9 ×\times103^{3} M_\odot and \sim9 ×\times104^{4} M_\odot.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1311.6918,
  title  = {Radio Detections During Two State Transitions of the Intermediate Mass Black Hole HLX-1},
  author = {Natalie Webb and David Cseh and Emil Lenc and Olivier Godet and Didier Barret and Stephane Corbel and Sean Farrell and Rob Fender and Neil Gehrels and Ian Heywood},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.6918},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

13 pages, includes supplementary online information. Published in Science in August 2012