A Stellar-mass Black Hole in the Ultra-luminous X-ray Source M82 X-1?

We have analyzed the archival XMM-Newton data of the bright UltraLuminous X-ray Source (ULX) M82 X-1 with an 105 ksec exposure when the source was in the steady state. Thanks to the high photon statistics from the large effective area and long exposure, we were able to discriminate different X-ray continuum spectral models. Neither the standard accretion disk model (where the radial dependency of the disk effective temperature is T (r) ∝ r) nor a power-law model gives a satisfactory fit. In fact, observed curvature of the M82 X-1 spectrum was just between those of the two models. When the exponent of the radial dependence (p in T (r) ∝ r) of the disk temperature is allowed to be free, we obtained p = 0.61 −0.02. Such a reduction of p from the standard value 3/4 under extremely high mass accretion rates is predicted from the accretion disk theory as a consequence of the radial energy advection. Thus, the accretion disk in M82 X-1 is considered to be in the Slim disk state, where an optically thick Advection Dominant Accretion Flow (ADAF) is taking place. We have applied a theoretical slim disk spectral model to M82 X-1, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University