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Spectral variability of ultraluminous X-ray sources

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 نشر من قبل Juri Poutanen
 تاريخ النشر 2009
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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We study spectral variability of 11 ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) using archived XMM-Newton and Chandra observations. We use three models to describe the observed spectra: a power-law, a multi-colour disc (MCD) and a combination of these two models. We find that 7 ULXs show a correlation between the luminosity Lx and the photon index Gamma. Furthermore, 4 out of these 7 ULXs also show spectral pivoting in the observed energy band. We also find that two ULXs show an Lx-Gamma anti-correlation. The spectra of 4 ULXs in the sample can be adequately fitted with a MCD model. We compare these sources to known black hole binaries (BHB) and find that they follow similar paths in their luminosity-temperature diagrams. Finally we show that the `soft excess reported for many of these ULXs at about 0.2 keV seems to roughly follow a trend Lsoft propto T^{-3.5} when modelled with a power-law plus a `cool MCD model. This is contrary to the L propto T^4 relation that is expected from theory and what is seen for many accreting BHBs. The observed trend could instead arise from disc emission beamed by an outflowing wind around a about 10 solar mass black hole.

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We study spectral variability of 11 ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) using archived XMM-Newton and Chandra observations. We use three models to describe the observed spectra; a power-law, a multi-colour disk (MCD) and a combination of these two mode ls. We find that out of the 11 ULXs in our sample, 7 ULXs show a correlation between the luminosity and the photon index Gamma (hereafter L-Gamma correlation). Furthermore, out of the 7 ULXs that have the L-Gamma correlation, 4 ULXs also show spectral pivoting in the observed energy band. We also find that two ULXs show an L-Gamma anti-correlation. The spectra of 4 ULXs in the sample can be adequately fitted with a MCD model. We compare these sources to known black hole binaries (BHB) and find that they follow similar paths in their luminosity-temperature (hereafter L-T) diagrams. Finally we show that the soft excess reported for many of these ULXs at 0.2 keV seem to follow a trend L propto T^{-4} when modeled with a power-law plus a cool MCD model. This is contrary to the expected L propto T^4 relation that is expected from theory and what is seen for many accreting BHBs.
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