Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL BULLETIN
Volume 76, Issue 1, Pages 6-38Publisher
MAIK NAUKA/INTERPERIODICA/SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1134/S1990341321010077
Keywords
X-rays: binaries; accretion; accretion disks
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Funding
- Russian Foundation for Basic Research [19-12-50215, 19-02-00432]
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ULXs are a class of unique objects with X-ray luminosities exceeding the Eddington limit, mostly believed to be supercritical accretion disks. The discovery of neutron stars in some systems further supports this conclusion.
UltraluminousX-ray sources (ULXs) were identified as a separate class of objects in 2000 based on data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. These are unique objects: their X-ray luminosities exceed the Eddington limit for a typical stellar-mass black hole. For a long time, the nature of ULXs remained unclear. However, the gradual accumulation of data, new results of X-ray and optical spectroscopy, and the study of the structure and energy of nebulae surrounding ULXs led to the understanding that most of the ultraluminous X-ray sources must be supercritical accretion disks like SS 433. The discovery of neutron stars in a number of objects only increased the confidence of the scientific community in the conclusions obtained, since the presence of neutron stars in such systems clearly indicates a supercritical accretion regime. In this review, we systematize the main facts about the observational manifestations of ULXs and SS 433 in the X-ray and optical ranges and discuss their explanation from the point of view of the supercritical accretion theory.
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