Giant X-ray Flares From Suspected Black Holes in Extragalactic Globular Clusters
Abstract
The existence of both stellar- and intermediate-mass black holes within globular clusters has been the subject of intense debate for decades. The rich globular cluster populations of nearby elliptical galaxies provide much more fertile hunting grounds over the meager globular cluster population of the Milky Way to search for accreting black holes emitting near their Eddington limit. Extreme X-ray variability of >1e39 ergs/s sources provide the best means of identifying such black holes. We present results from our search for short-term (< few hours) X-ray flares from extragalactic globular clusters. Interesting candidates include a source that flared to 8e40 ergs/s on a ~1 minute time scale, and another source that flared by a factor of 50 to 2e39 ergs/s for several hundred seconds in four different Chandra epochs.
- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #14
- Pub Date:
- August 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014HEAD...1412219I