Related papers: Ultraluminous X-ray sources: three exciting years
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…
Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are those X-ray sources located away from the centre of their host galaxy with luminosities exceeding the Eddington limit of a stellar-mass black hole ($L_X>10^{39}\;{\rm erg\,s}^{-1}$). The discovery of…
Recent evidence - in particular the hard X-ray spectra obtained by NuSTAR, and the large amplitude hard X-ray variability observed when ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) show soft spectra - reveals that common ULX behaviour is inconsistent…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are some of the most enigmatic X-ray bright sources known to date. It is generally accepted that they cannot host black holes as large as those associated with active galaxies, but they appear to be…
The luminosity range at and just below the 10^39 erg/s cut-off for defining ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) is a little-explored regime. It none-the-less hosts a large number of X-ray sources, and has great potential for improving our…
While many observed ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs, Lx > 10^39 erg s^-1) could be extragalactic X-ray binaries (XRBs) emitting close to the Eddington limit, the highest-luminosity ULXs (Lx > 3x10^39 erg s^-1) exceed the isotropic…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with Lx > 10^{39} ergs/s have been discovered in great numbers in external galaxies with ROSAT, Chandra, and XMM. The central question regarding this important class of sources is whether they represent an…
The study of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) has changed dramatically over the last decade. In this review we first describe the most important observations of ULXs in various wavebands, and across multiple scales in space and time. We…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are likely to include different physical types of objects. We discuss some possible subclasses, reviewing the properties of a sample of ULXs recently observed by Chandra and XMM-Newton. Sources with an…
The nature of the ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) is still to be understood. Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the high X-ray luminosity: stellar mass black holes with emission collimated by relativistic effects or…
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…
Ultraluminous x-ray sources (ULXs) in nearby galaxies shine brighter than any X-ray source in our Galaxy. ULXs are usually modeled as stellar-mass black holes (BHs) accreting at very high rates or intermediate-mass BHs. We present…
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…
In this proof-of-concept study we demonstrate that in a binary system mass can be transferred toward an accreting compact object at extremely high rate. If the transferred mass is efficiently converted to X-ray luminosity (with disregard of…
Since their discovery, Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) have attracted attention due to their combination of extreme luminosities and extra-nuclear locations. However, they are a fairly rare phenomenon, and attempts to investigate the…
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…
Optical studies of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) in nearby galaxies have turned out to be instrumental in discriminating between various models including the much advertised intermediate mass black hole hypothesis and various beaming…
Nearby galaxies host ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), whose nature remains largely unknown. Until the discovery of the first ULX pulsar, M82 X-2, the mechanism powering the large luminosities of most ULXs was thought to be…
Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) display a typical set of properties not seen in Galactic stellar-mass black holes (BHs): higher luminosity Lx > 3 10^39 erg/s, unusually soft X-ray components (kT < 0.3 keV) and a characteristic…
In the last few years multiwavelength observations have boosted our understanding of Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs). Yet, the most fundamental questions on ULXs still remain to be definitively answered: do they contain stellar or…