Related papers: Pulsating ULXs: large pulsed fraction excludes str…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) were once largely believed to be powered by super-Eddington accretion onto stellar-mass black holes, although in some rare cases, ULXs also serve as potential candidates for (sub-Eddington) intermediate…
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…
The discovery of pulsations in (at least) six ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) has shown that neutron stars can accrete at (highly) super-Eddington rates, challenging the standard accretion theories. M51 ULX-7, with a spin signal of…
New optical narrowband imaging observations of the fields of several ULXs are presented. Known supershell nebulae are associated with a number of these ULXs, which we detect in emission line filters such as [S II], He II, [O II] and [O…
We present results from a Chandra study of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in a sample of 17 nearby (D_L<60 Mpc) luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs), selected to have star formation rates (SFRs) in excess of 7 M_sun yr^-1 and low…
We report the detection of coherent pulsations from the ultraluminous X-ray source NGC 7793 P13. The ~0.42s nearly sinusoidal pulsations were initially discovered in broadband X-ray observations using XMM-Newton and NuSTAR taken in 2016. We…
By comparing the ratio of flux densities in the X-ray and UV wavebands by way of the spectral optical-X-Ray index, $\alpha_{ox}$, we explore the relation between the emissions in the respective wavebands for a number of ULXs with known…
We present preliminary results of a Chandra Large Program to monitor the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) populations of three nearby, ULX-rich galaxies over the course of a year, finding the ULX population to show a variety of long-term…
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…
Millisecond spinning, low magnetic field neutron stars are believed to attain their fast rotation in a 0.1-1 Gyr-long phase during which they accrete matter endowed with angular momentum from a low-mass companion star. Despite extensive…
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…
A sub-set of the brightest ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), with X-ray luminosities well above $10^{40}$ erg s$^{-1}$, typically have energy spectra which can be well described as hard power-laws, and short-term variability in excess of…
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are accreting black holes that may contain the missing population of intermediate mass black holes or reflect super-Eddington accretion physics. Ten years of Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of ULXs,…
Ring galaxies are fascinating laboratories: a catastrophic impact between two galaxies (one not much smaller than the other) has produced fireworks especially in the larger one, when hit roughly perpendicularly to the plane. We analyze the…
Recently, several ultraluminous X-ray (ULX) sources were shown to host a neutron star (NS) accretor. We perform a suite of evolutionary calculations which show that, in fact, NSs are the dominant type of ULX accretor. Although black holes…
So far quite a few ultraluminous X-ray (ULX) pulsars have been discovered. In this work, we construct a super-Eddington, magnetic accretion disk model to estimate the dipole magnetic field of eight ULX pulsars based on their observed…
Most ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are thought to be powered by neutron stars and black holes accreting beyond the Eddington limit. If the compact object is a black hole or a neutron star with a magnetic field $\lesssim10^{12}$ G, the…
To test the idea that ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in external galaxies represent a class of accreting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), we have undertaken a program to identify ULXs and a lower luminosity X-ray comparison sample…
Constraining the astrophysical nature of Ultra-Luminous X-ray (ULX) sources, which have X-ray luminosities exceeding 10^39 erg/s, has been elusive due to the optical faintness of any counterparts. With high spectral resolution observations…
Ultraluminous supersoft sources (ULSs) are defined by a thermal spectrum with colour temperatures ~0.1 keV, bolometric luminosities ~ a few 10^39 erg/s, and almost no emission above 1 keV. It has never been clear how they fit into the…