2005/09/30 by Gulab C. Dewangan, Lev Titarchuk, Richard E. Griffiths · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/499235
published as Astrophys.J.637:L21-L24,2006 · Final version, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2005/11/03 · openalex publication_date 2006/01/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We report the first clear evidence for the simultaneous presence of a low-frequency break and a QPO in the fluctuation power spectrum of a well-known ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in M82 using long XMM-Newton observations. The break occurs at a frequency of 34.2 mHz. The QPO has a centroid at ν QPO = 114.3 ± 1.5 mHz, a coherence Q ≡ ν QPO /Δν FWHM ≃ 3.5, and an amplitude (rms) of 19% in the 2-10 keV band. The power spectrum is approximately flat below the break frequency and then falls off above the break frequency as a power law with the QPO superposed. This form of the power spectrum is characteristic of the Galactic X-ray binaries (XRBs) in their high or intermediate states. M82 X-1 was likely in an intermediate state during the observation. The EPIC pn spectrum is well described by a model comprising an absorbed power law (Γ ~ 2) and an iron line at ~6.6 keV with a width σ ~ 0.2 keV and an equivalent width of ~180 eV. Using the well-established correlations between the power and energy spectral parameters for XRBs, we estimate a black hole mass for M82 X-1 in the range of ~25-520 M ☉ , including systematic errors that arise due to the uncertainty in the calibration of the photon spectral index versus QPO frequency relation.