XMM-Newton reveals extreme winds in ultraluminous X-ray sources
Abstract
Ultraluminous X-ray sources are extragalactic, off-nucleus, point sources with X-ray luminosities above 10^{39} erg/s, thought to be powered by accretion onto compact objects. Viable solutions include accretion onto neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, stellar-mass black holes at or in excess of the Eddington limit or intermediate-mass black holes. The lack of sufficient energy resolution in previous analyses has prevented an unambiguous identification of any emission or absorption lines in the X-ray band, thereby precluding a detailed analysis of the accretion flow. In this talk, I will show the discovery of rest-frame emission and blueshifted (∼0.2c) absorption lines arising from highly ionized gas in the deep high-resolution XMM-Newton spectra of two ultraluminous X-ray sources. The blueshifted absorption lines occurs in a fast outflowing gas, whereas the emission lines originate in slow-moving gas around the source. The compact object is therefore surrounded by powerful winds with an outflow velocity of about 0.2c as predicted by models of hyper-accreting black holes. Further, deep, XMM-Newton observations will reveal powerful winds in many other ultraluminous X-ray sources and provide important hints to estimate the energetics of the wind, the geometry of the system, and the black hole masses.
- Publication:
-
XMM-Newton: The Next Decade
- Pub Date:
- June 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016xnnd.confE..59P