The hyperluminous X‐ray source population

MacKenzie, A.D.A.; Roberts, T.P.; Walton, D.J.

Abstract

We have recently published a catalog of 1843 candidate ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). This is the largest catalog of ULXs to date and was built by cross-correlating recent serendipitous source catalogs from the XMM-Newton, Swift, and Chandra observatories with a large sample of galaxies, primarily from HyperLEDA. The catalog contains 71 hyperluminous X-ray source (HLX) candidates, the most extreme members of the ULX population with luminosities above 1041 erg s−1. These sources are often considered the best candidates for intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) accretors and include the archetypal IMBH candidate ESO 243–49 HLX-1. However, the most luminous of the known pulsating ULXs, NGC 5907 ULX1, is also an HLX at its brightest. We demonstrate that these two objects occupy distinct areas of the hardness-intensity parameter space, and use this to contextualize the results from a pilot study of three data-rich examples of the 42 HLXs we select as the best candidates based on their multi-wavelength counterparts and X-ray data quality. We briefly discuss the implications of this work.

Citation

MacKenzie, A., Roberts, T., & Walton, D. (2023). The hyperluminous X‐ray source population. Astronomische Nachrichten, 344(4), Article e230028. https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.20230028

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 24, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Feb 28, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-05
• Deposit Date: Apr 28, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 28, 2023
• Journal: Astronomische Nachrichten
• Print ISSN: 0004-6337
• Electronic ISSN: 1521-3994
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 344
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: e230028
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.20230028
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1174895