Searching for IMBHs: characterising three new bright ULX candidates with Chandra
Abstract
We propose Chandra observations of 3 new highly luminous (>5e40 erg/s) ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) candidates within 100 Mpc, selected from the 2XMM-DR3 catalogue. Other similarly bright ULXs have X-ray spectral and timing properties consistent with being intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in sub-Eddington accretion states. The unique imaging of Chandra will be used to confirm the point like nature of the sources, and to test whether one object is consistent with being a background QSO. The proposed observations will obtain the first reasonable quality (~1000 counts) X-ray data of one ULX candidate, and the second such data set of another. This will allow us to constrain the X-ray spectral and timing characteristics of the sources, and test the hypothesis that they harbour IMBHs.
- Publication:
-
Chandra Proposal
- Pub Date:
- September 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012cxo..prop.3621S