Spectral Variability of Ultraluminous Compact X‐Ray Sources in Nearby Spiral Galaxies

Using the X-ray data taken with ASCA, a detailed analysis was made ofintensity and spectral variations of three ultra-luminous extra-galacticcompact X-ray sources (ULXs); IC 342 source 1, M81 X-6, and NGC 1313 source B,all exhibiting X-ray luminosity in the range 10^{39}-1.5x10^{40} erg s^{-1}. Asalready reported, IC 342 source 1 showed short-term X-ray intensity variabilityby a factor of 2.0 on a typical time scale of 10 ks. M81 X-6 varied by a factorof 1.6 across seven observations spanning 3 years, while NGC 1313 source Bvaried by a factor of 2.5 between two observations conducted in 1993 July and1995 November. The ASCA spectra of these sources, acquired on these occasions,were all described successfully as optically-thick emission from standardaccretion disks around black holes. This confirms previous ASCA works whichexplained ULXs as mass-accreting massive black-hole binaries. In all threesources, the disk color temperature was uncomfortably high at T_{in}=1.0-2.0keV, and was found to vary in proportion to the square-root of the source flux.The apparent accretion-disk radius is hence inferred to change as inverselyproportional to T_{in}. This suggests a significant effect of advection in theaccretion disk. However, even taking this effect fully into account, the toohigh values of T_{in} of ULXs cannot be explained. Further invoking the rapidblack-hole rotation may give a solution to this issue.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, ApJ accepte