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Bright radio emission from an ultraluminous stellar-mass microquasar in M 31

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Authors
Middleton, Matthew J.
Miller-Jones, James C. A.
Markoff, Sera
Fender, Rob
Henze, Martin
Hurley-Walker, Natasha
Scaife, Anna M. M.
Roberts, Timothy P.
Walton, Dominic
Carpenter, John
Macquart, Jean-Pierre
Bower, Geoffrey C.
Gurwell, Mark
Pietsch, Wolfgang
Haberl, Frank
Harris, Jonathan
Daniel, Michael
Miah, Junayd
Done, Chris
Morgan, John S.
Dickinson, Hugh
Charles, Phil
Burwitz, Vadim
Della Valle, Massimo
Freyberg, Michael
Greiner, Jochen
Hernanz, Margarita
Hartmann, Dieter H.
Hatzidimitriou, Despina
Riffeser, Arno
Sala, Gloria
Seitz, Stella
Reig, Pablo
Rau, Arne
Orio, Marina
Titterington, David
Grainge, Keith
Date
2013
Type
Journal Article

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Middleton, Matthew J. and Miller-Jones, James C. A. and Markoff, Sera and Fender, Rob and Henze, Martin and Hurley-Walker, Natasha and Scaife, Anna M. M. et al. 2013. Bright radio emission from an ultraluminous stellar-mass microquasar in M 31. Nature. 493 (7431): pp. 187-190.
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Nature
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This is the author’s version of a work in which changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication.

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Abstract

A subset of ultraluminous X-ray sources (those with luminosities of less than 1040 erg s−1; ref. 1) are thought to be powered by the accretion of gas onto black holes with masses of ~5–20 M☉, probably by means of an accretion disk. The X-ray and radio emission are coupled in such Galactic sources; the radio emission originates in a relativistic jet thought to be launched from the innermost regions near the black hole, with the most powerful emission occurring when the rate of infalling matter approaches a theoretical maximum (the Eddington limit). Only four such maximal sources are known in the Milky Way, and the absorption of soft X-rays in the interstellar medium hinders the determination of the causal sequence of events that leads to the ejection of the jet. Here we report radio and X-ray observations of a bright new X-ray source in the nearby galaxy M 31, whose peak luminosity exceeded 1039 erg s−1. The radio luminosity is extremely high and shows variability on a timescale of tens of minutes, arguing that the source is highly compact and powered by accretion close to the Eddington limit onto a black hole of stellar mass. Continued radio and X-ray monitoring of such sources should reveal the causal relationship between the accretion flow and the powerful jet emission.