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Related papers: Ultra-luminous X-ray sources: extreme accretion an…

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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…

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

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…

The origin and nature of Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) is a contentious and controversial topic. There are ongoing debates about the masses of the objects responsible, their sources of mass for accretion, and their relation to stellar…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Julian H. Krolik

The nature of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), which are off-nuclear extragalactic X-ray sources that exceed the Eddington luminosity for a stellar-mass black hole, is still largely unknown. They might be black hole X-ray binaries in a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2013-02-20 Mathieu Servillat , Alexis Coleiro , Sylvain Chaty

The radiation spectra of many of the brightest ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are dominated by a hard power law component, likely powered by a hot, optically thin corona that Comptonizes soft seed photons emitted from a cool, optically…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Aristotle Socrates , Shane W. Davis

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-05-25 T. P. Roberts , M. J. Middleton , A. D. Sutton , M. Mezcua , D. J. Walton , L. M. Heil

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-10-21 Devina Misra , Tassos Fragos , Thomas Tauris , Emmanouil Zapartas , David R. Aguilera-Dena

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

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…

Many upcoming surveys, particularly in the radio and optical domains, are designed to probe either the temporal and/or the spatial variability of a range of astronomical objects. In the light of these high resolution surveys, we review the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-18 Natalie Webb , David Cseh , Franz Kirsten

The luminosities of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) require an exotic solution with either super-critical accretion modes onto stellar mass black holes or sub-critical accretion onto intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) being invoked.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-17 Matthew J. Middleton , Dominic J. Walton , Timothy P. Roberts , Lucy Heil

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

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

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-18 L. Zampieri , M. Colpi , M. Mapelli , A. Patruno , T. P. Roberts

Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are a population of extragalactic objects whose luminosity exceeds the Eddington limit for a 10 Msun black hole (BH). Their properties have been widely interpreted in terms of accreting stellar-mass or…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-02-22 F. Pintore , L. Zampieri , L. Stella , A. Wolter , S. Mereghetti , G. L. Israel

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 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

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

Most Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are thought to be powered by super-Eddington accretion onto stellar-mass compact objects. Accretors in this extreme regime are naturally expected to ionise copious amounts of plasma in their vicinity…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-10-13 P. Kosec , C. Pinto , C. S. Reynolds , M. Guainazzi , E. Kara , D. J. Walton , A. C. Fabian , M. L. Parker , I. Valtchanov