Low metallicity natal environments and black hole masses in Ultraluminous X-ray Sources

Abstract

We review the available estimates of the masses of the compact object in Ultraluminous X-ray Sources (ULXs) and critically reconsider the stellar-mass versus intermediate-mass black hole interpretations. Black holes of several hundreds to thousands of $M_{\odot }$ are not required for the majority of ULXs, although they might be present in the handful of known hyper-luminous ($\sim 10^{41}$ erg s${}^{-1}$) objects and/or some sources showing timing features in their power density spectra. At the same time, however, stellar mass BHs may be quite a reasonable explanation for ULXs below $\sim 10^{40}$ erg s${}^{-1}$, but they need super-Eddington accretion and some suitable dependence of the beaming factor on the accretion rate in order to account for ULXs above this (isotropic) luminosity. We investigate in detail a 'third way' in which a proportion of ULXs contain $\approx 30-90M_{\odot }$ black holes formed in a low metallicity environment and accreting in a slightly critical regime and find that it can consistently account for the properties of bright ULXs. Surveys of ULX locations looking for a statistically meaningful relationship between ULX position, average luminosity and local metallicity will provide a definitive test of our proposal.

11 pages, 1 figure, accepted by MNRAS

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