English

Spectroscopic Studies of an Ultraluminous Supersoft X-Ray Source in M81

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2015-09-01 v1

Abstract

Ultraluminous supersoft X-ray sources (ULSs) exhibit supersoft X-ray spectra with blackbody temperatures below 0.1 keV and bolometric luminosities above 1039^{39} ergs s1^{-1}. In this Letter, we report the first optical spectroscopic observations of a ULS in M81 using the LRIS spectrograph on the Keck I telescope. The detected Balmer emission lines show a mean intrinsic velocity dispersion of 400±\pm80 km s1^{-1}, which is consistent with that from an accretion disk. The spectral index of the continuum on the blue side is also consistent with the multi-color disk model. The Hα_{\alpha} emission line exhibits a velocity of \sim180 km s1^{-1} relative to the local stellar environment, suggesting that this ULS may be a halo system in M81 belonging to an old population. No significant shift is found for the Hα_{\alpha} emission line between two observations separated by four nights.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.07651,
  title  = {Spectroscopic Studies of an Ultraluminous Supersoft X-Ray Source in M81},
  author = {Yu Bai and JiFeng Liu and Song Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.07651},
  year   = {2015}
}