English
Related papers

Related papers: Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources

200 papers

We investigate models for the class of ultraluminous non-nuclear X-ray sources (ULXs) seen in a number of galaxies and probably associated with star-forming regions. Models where the X-ray emission is assumed to be isotropic run into…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-06 A. R. King , M. B. Davies , M. J. Ward , G. Fabbiano , M. Elvis

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are mostly extragalactic non-nuclear point sources having X-ray luminosity exceeding the Eddington luminosity of 10 $M_\odot$ black hole i.e., $L_X \geq $ 10$^{39}$ erg ~s$^{-1}$. They are observed in all…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-08 C. M. Sariga , P. Shalima , D. Bhattacharya , Vivek K. Agrawal

We present the results from an X-ray and optical study of a new sample of eight extreme luminosity ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) candidates, which were selected as the brightest ULXs (with L_X > 5x10^40 erg/s) located within 100 Mpc…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-04 Andrew D. Sutton , Timothy P. Roberts , Dominic J. Walton , Jeanette C. Gladstone , Amy E. Scott

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

X-ray observations have revealed in other galaxies a class of extra-nuclear X-ray point sources with X-ray luminosities of $10^{39}$--$10^{41}$ erg/sec, exceeding the Eddington luminosity for stellar mass X-ray binaries. These…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Ji-Feng Liu , Joel N. Bregman

The ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) were isolated in external galaxies for the last 5 years. Their X-ray luminosities exceed 100-10000 times those of brightest Milky Way black hole binaries and they are extremely variable. There are two…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 S. Fabrika , P. Abolmasov

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Saul Rappaport , Philipp Podsiadlowski , Eric Pfahl

Ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are off-nuclear X-ray sources in nearby galaxies with X-ray luminosities $\geq$ 10$^{39}$ erg s$^{-1}$. The measurement of the black hole (BH) masses of ULXs is a long-standing problem. Here we estimate…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-23 Xin-Lin Zhou

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are extragalactic X-ray emitters located off-center of their host galaxy and with a luminosity in excess of a few ${10^{39}\text{ erg s}^{-1}}$, if emitted isotropically. The discovery of periodic…

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) were an enigma since their discovery. ASCA showed that they are accreting black holes (BHs) with unknown mass, while Chandra & XMM data shows that the many of the lower luminosity ULXs can be explained by…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2013-07-01 Jeanette C. Gladstone

The nature of the ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in the nearby galaxies is a matter of debates. One of the popular hypothesis associates them with accretion at a sub-Eddington rate on to intermediate mass black holes. Another…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2013-06-21 Juri Poutanen , Sergei Fabrika , Azamat F. Valeev , Olga Sholukhova , Jochen Greiner

Ultraluminous pulsars are a definite proof that persistent super-Eddington accretion occurs in nature. They support the scenario according to which most Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) are super-Eddington accretors of stellar mass rather…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-07-04 P. Kosec , C. Pinto , D. J. Walton , A. C. Fabian , M. Bachetti , M. Brightman , F. Fürst , B. W. Grefenstette

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-02-22 Andrew King , Jean-Pierre Lasota , Matthew Middleton

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 puzzling class of exotic objects, which have been known about for more than 30 years, is reaching a new era of understanding. We have discovered hundreds of Ultra Luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) - non-nuclear sources with X-ray luminosity…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2014-12-19 Anna Wolter , Anthony P. Rushton , Mar Mezcua , David Cseh , Fabio Pintore , Isabella Prandoni , Zsolt Paragi , Luca Zampieri

We review the available estimates of the masses of the compact object in Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) and critically reconsider the stellar-mass versus intermediate-mass black hole interpretations. Black holes of several hundreds to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-14 L. Zampieri , T. P. Roberts

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-11-17 Elena Ambrosi , Luca Zampieri , Fabio Pintore , Anna Wolter

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…

We show that ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with coherent X-ray pulsing (PULXs) probably have neutron-star spin axes significantly misaligned from their central accretion discs. Scattering in the funnels collimating their emission and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-04-15 Andrew King , Jean-Pierre Lasota

Ultra-/hyper-luminous X-ray sources (ULX/HLX) could be interesting laboratories to improve our understanding of the supermassive black hole growth through super-Eddington accretion episodes and successive mergers of lighter holes. ULXs are…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-01-10 Hugo Tranin , Natalie Webb , Olivier Godet , Erwan Quintin