Mass of the active galactic nucleus black hole XMMUJ134736.6+173403

Abstract

A recent study of the X-ray source XMMUJ134736.6+173403 has revealed a strong quasi-periodic modulation of the X-ray flux. The observation of two quasiperiodic oscillations (QPOs) that occur on a daily timescale and exhibit a 3:1 frequency ratio strongly supports the evidence for the presence of an active galactic nucleus black hole (AGN BH). Assuming the orbital origin of QPOs we calculate the upper and lower limit on AGN BH mass M arriving at $M\approx 10^7-10^9{M}_{\odot }$. Comparing that to mass estimates of other sources, MMUJ134736.6+173403 appears to be the most massive source with commensurable QPO frequencies, and its mass represents the current observational upper limit on AGN BH mass based on QPO observations. We note it will be crucial for the falsification of particular resonance models of QPOs whether only single QPO with frequency that completes the harmonic sequence 3:2:1 is found in this source, or whether there is a new different pair of QPOs with frequencies in the 3:2 ratio. The former case would agree with the prediction of the 3:2 epicyclic resonance model and black hole mass $M\approx (5a^2+8a+8)\times 10^7{M}_{\odot }$, where a is a dimensionless BH spin.

5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in A&A Letters, minor corrections to the text to match published version

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Cited by in corpus (3)

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