Unraveling the accretion mechanism of intermediate-mass black holes with multi-wavelength observations

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K21054
• Project/Area Number (Other): 18H05873 (2018)
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund (2019); Single-year Grants (2018)
• Review Section: 0204:Astronomy, earth and planetary science, and related fields
• Research Institution: Tokyo University of Science
• Principal Investigator: Shogo Kobayashi 東京理科大学, 理学部第一部物理学科, 講師 (80822999)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-08-24 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: X線 / 超高光度X線源 / ブラックホール / 中性子星

Outline of Final Research Achievements

To unravel the emission mechanism and the true nature of an intermediate-mass black hole candidate, Ultra-Luminous X-ray source (ULX), a new analysis method is applied to their observational data sets. The new method has newly suggested that accretion disks with inner-disk radii of few hundreds of km are formed around the central object of ULXs. Although some ULXs have been identified as accreting neutron stars, which have masses as small as 1/100 times the working hypothesis in the present study, the new method has opened a new possibility that these neutron star ULXs can be utilized as calibration sources to estimate the mass of the reset whose central sources are still unidentified.

Free Research Field

X線宇宙物理

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

銀河中心には太陽の10万倍から10億倍の質量をもつ超巨大ブラックホールが存在する。これらは、銀河と互いに影響を与えながら成長していると考えられているため、その成長過程を解き明かすことは、我々の銀河系の形成過程を解き明かすことにもつながる学術的意義の高い研究であり、本研究はその一翼を担っている。