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The accreting compact objects in most of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are likely to be neutron stars rather than black holes as suggested by the recent detection of periodic pulsations from some of these sources located in neighboring…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-01-04 Mehmet Hakan Erkut

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

Thanks to a recent observation with XMM-Newton, we discovered periodic pulsations at P= 9.6652 +/- 0.0002 s in a new ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in the galaxy NGC 4631. This source, dubbed as X-8, shows one of the largest spin-up rates…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-07 L. Ducci , S. Mereghetti , F. Pintore , S. Allak , A. Santangelo , M. Sasaki , P. Kavanagh

Pulsating ultra-luminous X-ray sources (PULXs) are characterised by an extremely large luminosity ($ > 10^{40} \text{erg s}^{-1}$). While there is a general consensus that they host an accreting, magnetized neutron star (NS), the problem of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-04-14 Nabil Brice , Silvia Zane , Roberto Turolla , Kinwah Wu

Pulsating ultraluminous X-ray sources (PULXs) are accreting pulsars with apparent X-ray luminosity exceeding $10^{39}\, \rm erg\ s^{-1}$. We perform Monte-Carlo simulations to investigate whether high collimation effect (or strong beaming…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-12-28 X. Hou , Y. You , L. Ji , R. Soria , S. N. Zhang , M. Y. Ge , L. Tao , S. Zhang , H. Feng , M. Zhou , Y. L. Tuo , L. M. Song , J. C. Wang

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…

We analyse the most powerful X-ray outbursts from neutron stars in ten Magellanic high-mass X-ray binaries and three pulsating ultraluminous X-ray sources. Most of the outbursts rise to $L_{max}$ which is about the level of the Eddington…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-10-17 D. M. Christodoulou , S. G. T. Laycock , D. Kazanas

{\it NuSTAR} has detected pulsations from the ultraluminous X-ray source X-2 in M82 and archival {\it Chandra} observations have given us a good idea of its duty cycle. The newly discovered pulsar exhibited at least 4 super-Eddington…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-06-24 D. M. Christodoulou , D. Kazanas , S. G. T. Laycock

The recent discovery of pulsating ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) shows that the apparent luminosity of accreting neutron stars (NSs) can exceed the Eddington luminosity by a factor of hundreds. The relation between the actual and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-12-16 Alexander A. Mushtukov , Simon Portegies Zwart , Sergey S. Tsygankov , Dmitrij I. Nagirner , Juri Poutanen

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are bright X-ray sources in nearby galaxies not associated with the central supermassive black hole. Their luminosities imply they are powered by either an extreme accretion rate onto a compact stellar…

Three high-mass X-ray binaries have been discovered recently exhibiting enormous spinup rates. Conventional accretion theory predicts extremely high surface dipolar magnetic fields that we believe are unphysical. Instead, we propose quite…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-06-06 D. M. Christodoulou , S. G. T. Laycock , D. Kazanas

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are point-like sources that exhibit apparent X-ray luminosities exceeding the Eddington limit for stellar-mass compact objects. A widely accepted interpretation is that these systems are X-ray binaries…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-21 Lucas M. Pasquevich , Gustavo E. Romero , Matías M. Reynoso

The recent detection of pulsations from the ultra luminous X-ray source (ULX) NuSTAR J095551+6940.8 in M82 by Bachetti et al. indicates that the object is an accreting neutron star in a high mass X-ray binary (HMXB) system. The…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-01-13 K. Y. Ekşi , İ. C. Andaç , S. Çıkıntoğlu , A. A. Gençali , C. Güngör , F. Öztekin

Magnetars are neutron stars in which a strong magnetic field is the main energy source. About two dozens of magnetars, plus several candidates, are currently known in our Galaxy and in the Magellanic Clouds. They appear as highly variable…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-24 Sandro Mereghetti , Jose' Pons , Andrew Melatos

The recent discovery of periodic pulsations from several members of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) family in nearby galaxies as well as in our own galaxy unveiled the nature of the accreting compact object. Neutron stars rather than…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-01-13 Mehmet Hakan Erkut

Strong magnetic field of accreting neutron stars ($10^{14}$ G) is hard to probe by X-ray spectroscopy but can be indirectly inferred from spin-up/spin-down measurement in X-ray pulsars. The existing observations of slowly rotating X-ray…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-16 K. A. Postnov , N. I. Shakura , A. Yu. Kochetkova , L. Hjalmarsdotter

High magnetic fields are a distinguishing feature of neutron stars and the existence of sources (the soft gamma repeaters and the anomalous X-ray pulsars) hosting an ultra-magnetized neutron star (or magnetar) has been recognized in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2012-07-11 Nanda Rea , Jose' A. Pons , Diego F. Torres , Roberto Turolla

We discovered 2.8 s pulsations in the X-ray emission of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) M51 ULX-7 within the UNSEeN project, which was designed to hunt for new pulsating ULXs (PULXs) with XMM-Newton. The pulse shape is sinusoidal and…

We explored the expected properties of the neutrino emission from accreting neutron stars in X-ray binaries using numerical simulations. The simulations are based on a model in which neutrinos are produced by the decay of charged pions and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-15 L. Ducci , E. Perinati , P. Romano , S. Vercellone , M. Nikołajuk , A. Santangelo , M. Sasaki

Based on phase-resolved broadband spectroscopy using $XMM$-$Newton$ and $NuSTAR$, we report on a potential cyclotron resonant scattering feature at $E \sim 13$ keV in the pulsed spectrum of the recently discoverd ULX pulsar NGC 300 ULX1. If…