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Related papers: Herschel views on ultra-luminous X-ray sources

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Although ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULX) are important for astrophysics due to their extreme apparent super-Eddington luminosities, their nature is still poorly known. Theoretical and observational studies suggest that ULXs could be a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-09-29 Grzegorz Wiktorowicz , Jean-Pierre Lasota , Krzysztof Belczynski , Youjun Lu , Jifeng Liu , Krystian Iłkiewicz

Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources (ULX) are X-ray binaries with Lx>1E^39 ergs/s. The most spectacular examples of ULX occur in starburst galaxies and are now understood to be young, luminous High Mass X-ray Binaries. The conditions under which…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-15 A. H. Prestwich , M. Tsantaki , A. Zezas , F. E. Jackson , T. P. Roberts , R. Foltz , T. Linden , V. Kalogera

In order to explain unusually high luminosity and spectral nature of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), some of the underlying black holes are argued to be of intermediate mass, between several tens to million solar masses. Indeed, there…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-09-12 Tushar Mondal , Banibrata Mukhopadhyay

Ultraluminous X-ray sources are non-nuclear point sources exceeding the Eddington luminosity of a 10 Solar mass black hole. Modern consensus for a majority of the ULX population is that they are powered by stellar-mass black holes or…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-12-20 P. Kosec , C. Pinto , A. C. Fabian , D. J. Walton

Evidence is mounting that some Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) may contain accreting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). We review the current observational evidence for IMBH-ULXs. While low-luminosity ULXs with L_X <~ 10^39.5 erg/s…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-11-09 E. J. M Colbert , M. C. MIller

The nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) is not yet fully understood but it can be done in the most efficient way by analyzing its optical emission and environment. We present preliminary results of photometric and spectral studies…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-02-03 A. Vinokurov , K. Atapin , Y. Solovyeva , A. Sarkisyan , D. Oparin

Little is presently known about the nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX). Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain their properties: intermediate-mass BHs, Kerr BHs, young SNR, or background AGN. Some of the current…

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are non-nuclear point-like objects observed with extremely high X-ray luminosity that exceeds the Eddington limit of a $\rm10\,M_\odot$ black hole. A fraction of ULXs has been confirmed to contain neutron…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2024-11-04 Luhan Li , Bo Wang , Dongdong Liu , Yunlang Guo , Wen-Cong Chen , Zhanwen Han

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have been objects of great interest for the past few decades due to their unusually high luminosities and spectral properties. A few of these sources exhibit super-Eddington luminosities assuming them to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-11-28 Mayank Pathak , Banibrata Mukhopadhyay

We report the results of a programme of dual-epoch Chandra ACIS-S observations of five ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby spiral galaxies. All five ULXs are detected as unresolved, point-like X-ray sources by Chandra, though two…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 T. P. Roberts , R. S. Warwick , M. J. Ward , M. R. Goad

The more than 80 nearby galaxies imaged with the Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer have been analyzed in a search for Ultra-Luminous X-ray (ULX) sources. The sample of galaxies span the range of Hubble morphological types and…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Douglas A. Swartz , Kajal K. Ghosh , Allyn F. Tennant

I suggest that there are two classes of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), corresponding to super-Eddington mass inflow in two situations: (a) thermal-timescale mass transfer in high-mass X-ray binaries, and (b) long-lasting transient…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 A. R. King

Observations of high-redshift quasars frequently promote suggestions of large black hole masses, whose presence so early in cosmic time is not easily explicable. I consider the parallel with ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) -- now known…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-05-01 Andrew King

We consider ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) where the accretor is a neutron star rather than a black hole. We show that the recently-discovered example (M82 X-2) fits naturally into the simple picture of ULXs as beamed X-ray sources fed…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-02-17 Andrew King , Jean-Pierre Lasota

With the discovery of pulsations in some of the ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), it is quite clear that most of the ULXs harbor either a neutron star or a stellar mass black hole as a compact object accreting at super-Eddington rates.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-09-12 Manish Kumar , Rahul Sharma , Biswajit Paul

We have created a new, clean catalogue of extragalactic non-nuclear X-ray sources by correlating the 3XMM-DR4 data release of the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue with the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies and the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-01-09 H. P. Earnshaw , T. P. Roberts , M. J. Middleton , D. J. Walton , S. Mateos

Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) in globular clusters are low mass X-ray binaries that achieve high X-ray luminosities through a currently uncertain accretion mechanism. Using archival Chandra and Hubble Space Telescope observations, we…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-11-30 E. Thygesen , Y. Sun , J. Huang , K. C. Dage , S. E. Zepf , A. Kundu , D. Haggard , T. J. Maccarone

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have captivated researchers for decades due to their exceptionally high luminosities and unique spectral characteristics. Some of these sources defy expectations by exhibiting super-Eddington luminosities…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-05-07 Mayank Pathak , Banibrata Mukhopadhyay

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-07-22 Manish Kumar , Rahul Sharma , Biswajit Paul , Vikram Rana

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are off-nuclear compact objects with apparent luminosities above 10^39 erg/s, often exceeding the Eddington limit for stellar-mass black holes. Beaming is a commonly invoked mechanism to explain their…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-15 Ying-Han Mao , Xiang-Dong Li