An Intermediate-Mass Black Hole candidate in M51

Earnshaw, H.; Roberts, T.; Walton, D.; Lansbury, G.; Heil, L.; Done, C.; Harrison, F.; Sutton, A.; Middleton, M.; Mezcua, M.
Bibliographical reference

The Extremes of Black Hole Accretion, Proceedings of the conference held 8-10 June, 2015 in Madrid, Spain. Online at http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm_science/workshops/2015_science/, id.27

Advertised on:
7
2015
Number of authors
10
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We undertake a study of M51 ULX-7, using archival data from XMM-Newton, Chandra and NuSTAR, and optical and radio data from HST and VLA. The source has a consistently hard powerlaw X-ray spectrum with Γ˜1.5 and has high short-term variability, with all XMM-Newton observations having 30-40 percent rms. This is unusual variability behaviour for a ULX as we would expect highly variable ULXs to have soft spectra. The power spectrum features a break at ˜10^{-3} Hz, from low frequency spectral index α=-0.1 to high frequency spectral index α=-0.8, analogous to the low frequency break found in power spectra of black holes accreting in the low/hard state. We do not observe a corresponding high frequency break, however taking the white noise level as frequency upper limit, we can calculate a black hole mass upper limit of 9.12×10^{4} solar masses, assuming that the ULX is in the low/hard state. While there is no radio detection, we find a flux density upper limit of 87 μJy/beam. Using the X-ray/radio fundamental plane, we calculate a black hole mass upper limit of 1.95×10^{5} solar masses. Therefore, this ULX is consistent with being an IMBH accreting in the low/hard state.