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The nature of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) has long been plagued by an ambiguity about whether the central compact objects are intermediate-mass (IMBH, >~ 10^3 M_sun) or stellar-mass (a few tens M_sun) black holes (BHs). The high…
We present the first results of an XMM-Newton EPIC observation of the luminous X-ray source population in the supergiant spiral galaxy M101. We have studied the properties of the fourteen most luminous sources, all of which have intrinsic…
(abridged) In this paper, we examined XMM Newton EPIC spectra of 14 ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs)in addition to the XMM RGS spectra of two sources (Holmberg II X-1 and Holmberg IX X-1). We determined oxygen and iron abundances of the…
A fraction of the Ultra Luminous X-ray (ULX) sources are known to be accreting neutron stars as they show coherent X-ray pulsations with pulse periods ranging from ~1-30 seconds. While initially thought to host intermediate-mass black…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) represent an extreme class of accreting compact objects: from the identification of some of the accretors as neutron stars to the detection of powerful winds travelling at 0.1-0.2 c, the increasing…
Periodic pulsations have been found in emission from the ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) M82 X-2, strongly suggesting that the emitter is a rotating neutron star rather than a black hole. However, the radiation mechanisms and accretion…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are a population of extragalactic objects whose luminosity exceeds the Eddington limit for a 10 Msun black hole (BH). Their properties have been widely interpreted in terms of accreting stellar-mass or…
Luminosities of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are uncomfortably large if compared to the Eddington limit for isotropic accretion onto stellar-mass object. Most often either supercritical accretion onto stellar mass black hole or…
The controversy over whether ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) contain a new intermediate-mass class of black holes (IMBHs) remains unresolved. We present new analyses of the deepest XMM-Newton observations of ULXs that address their…
Following a serendipitous detection with the NuSTAR observatory, we present a multi-epoch spectral and temporal analysis of an extreme ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) located in the outskirts of the Circinus galaxy, hereafter Circinus…
The origin of Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) in external galaxies whose X-ray luminosities exceed those of the brightest black holes in our Galaxy by hundreds and thousands of times is mysterious. The most popular models for the ULXs…
We report the results of spectral fits to four bright ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in the Antennae galaxies (NGC 4038/4039) observed for 41 ksec with XMM-Newton. Although emission regions are not resolved as well as in prior Chandra…
We investigate the evolution of the properties of model populations of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) consisting of a black-hole accretor in a binary with a donor star. We have computed models corresponding to three different…
We model the multiwavelength properties of binaries accreting at super-critical rates with the aim to better understand the observational properties of Ultra-luminous X-ray Sources (ULXs). We calculate an extended grid of binary systems…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) represent the closest and most accessible laboratories to study sustained super-Eddington accretion onto compact objects. Over the past decade, the discoveries of coherent pulsations in a few ULXs has…
We outline our methods for obtaining high precision mass profiles, combining independent weak-lensing distortion, magnification, and strong-lensing measurements. For massive clusters the strong and weak lensing regimes contribute equal…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy (or iron line method) is a powerful tool to probe the strong gravity region of black holes, and currently is the only technique for measuring the spin of the supermassive ones. While all the available…
M82 hosts two well-known ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). X-1, an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) candidate, and X-2, an ultraluminous X-ray pulsar (ULXP). Here we present a broadband X-ray spectral analysis of both sources based on…
Holmberg IX X-1 is a well-known ultraluminous X-ray source with an X-ray luminosity of ~1e40 erg/s. The source has been monitored by the X-ray Telescope of Swift regularly. Since 2009 April, the source has been in an extended low luminosity…
In our recent work, we demonstrated that a novel X-ray scaling method, originally introduced for Galactic black holes, could be reliably extended to estimate the mass of supermassive black holes accreting at moderate to high level. Here, we…