Listening to the beat of a 400 solar-mass, middle-weight black hole
Abstract
Accreting X-ray point sources with luminosities exceeding the Eddington limit of a 20 solar mass black hole are referred to as ultraluminous X-ray sources. The brightest of these have long been suspected to host intermediate-mass black holes (mass range of a few 100-1000 solar masses). On such object is M82 X-1, thought to be an intermediate-mass black hole because of its extremely high X-ray luminosity and variability characteristics, although some models suggested that its mass may be only of the order of 20 solar masses. The previous mass estimates were based on scaling relations which used low-frequency characteristic timescales which have large intrinsic uncertainties. In stellar-mass black holes we know that the high frequency quasi-periodic oscillations that occur in a 3:2 frequency ratio (100-450 Hz) are stable and scale inversely with black hole mass with a reasonably small dispersion. The discovery of such stable oscillations thus potentially offers an alternative and less ambiguous mass determination for intermediate-mass black holes, but has hitherto not been realized. I will discuss the discovery of stable, twin-peak (3:2 frequency ratio) X-ray quasi-periodic oscillations from M82 X-1 at the frequencies of 3.32 Hz and 5.07 Hz and how this helps overcome the systematic uncertainties present in previous studies. Assuming we can extend the stellar-mass relationship, I estimate its black hole mass to be 428+-105 solar masses. This work was recently published in Nature (DOI:10.1038/nature13710). I will also discuss future prospects of detecting more of such oscillations to weigh other intermediate-mass black hole candidates.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #225
- Pub Date:
- January 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015AAS...22522503P