Accretion Disk Spectra of the Brightest Ultraluminous X-Ray Source in M82

Emission spectra of hot accretion disks characteristic of advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF) models are investigated for comparison with the brightest ultraluminous source, X-1, in the galaxy M82. If the spectral state of the source is similar to the low-luminosity hard state of stellar mass black holes in our Galaxy, a fit to the Chandra X-ray spectrum and constraints from the radio and infrared upper limits requires a black hole mass in the range of 9×10⁴-5×10⁵ M_solar. Lower black hole masses (<~10⁴ M_solar) are possible if M82 X-1 corresponds to the high-luminosity hard state of Galactic black hole X-ray binary sources. Both of these spectrally degenerate hot accretion disk solutions lead to an intermediate-mass black hole interpretation for M82 X-1. Since these solutions have different spectral variability with X-ray luminosity and predict different radio/infrared emission, they could be distinguished by future off-axis Chandra observations or simultaneous sensitive radio/infrared detections.