Detalles de publicación

PP 013075

Radio observations of extreme ULXs: revealing the most powerful ULX radio nebula ever or the jet of an intermediate-mass black hole?

M.Mezcua (1,2), T.P.Roberts (3), A.D.Sutton (3), A.P.Lobanov (4)
(1) Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), E-38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (2) Universidad de La Laguna, Dept. Astrofísica, E-38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (3) Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK (4) Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Auf dem Hügel 69, D-53121 Bonn, Germany
The most extreme ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), with $L_\mathrm{X} > 5 \times 10^{40}$ erg s$^{-1}$, are amongst the best candidates for hosting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in the haloes of galaxies. Jet radio emission is expected from a sub-Eddington accreting IMBH in the low/hard (radio bright) state. In a search for such IMBH jet radio emission, we have observed with the Very Large Array (VLA) at 5 GHz a sample of seven extreme ULXs whose X-ray properties indicate they are in the hard state. Assuming they remain in this state, the non-detection of radio emission for six of the target sources allows us to constrain their black hole mass to the IMBH regime, thus ruling out a supermassive black hole nature. For the extreme ULX in the galaxy NGC\,2276, we detect extended radio emission formed by two lobes of total flux density 1.43 $\pm$ 0.22 mJy and size $\sim$650 pc. The X-ray counterpart is located between the two lobes, suggesting the presence of a black hole with jet radio emission. The radio luminosity allows us to constrain the black hole mass of this source to the IMBH regime; hence, the extreme ULX in NGC\,2276 could be the first detection of extended jet radio emission from an IMBH. The radio emission could also possibly come from a radio nebula powered by the ULX with a minimum total energy of $5.9 \times 10^{52}$ erg, thus constituting the most powerful and largest ULX radio nebula ever observed.

 
Aceptado para publicación en MNRAS | Enviado el 2013-10-22 | Proyecto P301138