EPJ Web of Conferences 240, 07005 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202024007005

Probing Supercritical Accretion in Ultraluminous X-ray Source M82 X-1 by means of X-ray Spectral Evolution Analysis

¹ Astronomy Study Program, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Ganesha 10, Bandung, 40132, Indonesia
² Astronomy Research Division, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Ganesha 10, 40132, Indonesia

^* e-mail: izatulhafizah@students.itb.ac.id
^** e-mail: kiki@as.itb.ac.id

Published online: 21 August 2020

Abstract

We analyze the spectral evolution of ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) M82 X-1 by means of spectral fitting. We use selected Swift/XRT data in 2014 and 2015. The flux of M82 X-1 increased by a factor of 2-3 from 2014 to 2015. Most of the data in 2015 show greater dominance of hard component than those of 2014. Due to moderate signal-to-noise ratio, we only fit each spectrum with power-law and disk blackbody model separately. The data in 2014 are better fitted with powerlaw model based on the value of reduced-chi squared. On the other hand, both powerlaw and diskbb models showed comparable re- duced chi-squared value for the data in 2015. We found that the range of spectral index for 2014 data is 1.65 < Γ < 2.08 and for 2015 data is 1.02 < Γ < 1.95 from the powerlaw model, resembling the range for that of black hole binary system at low mass accretion rate. We obtained higher innermost disk temper- ature from the disk blackbody model, 1.20 keV < T_in < 3.63 keV, compared to that of black hole binary system in the thermal state. The calculated innermost radius of the disk, R_in, varies between 0.99 to 4.89 R_S assuming 10 M₀ black hole which indicates that the spectral state is not in thermal dominant state but rather we suspect that M82 X-1 exhibits greater mass accretion rate than that of the thermal dominant state.