388 research outputs found
Discovery of An Active Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Candidate in the Barred Bulgeless Galaxy NGC 3319
We report the discovery of an active intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH)
candidate in the center of nearby barred bulgeless galaxy . The
point X-ray source revealed by archival Chandra and XMM-Newton observations is
spatially coincident with the optical and UV galactic nuclei from Hubble Space
Telescope observations. The spectral energy distribution derived from the
unresolved X-ray and UV-optical flux is comparable with active galactic nuclei
(AGNs) rather than ultra-luminous X-ray sources, although its bolometric
luminosity is only . Assuming an Eddington
ratio range between 0.001 and 1, the black hole mass (M_\rm{BH}) will be
located at , placing it in the so-called
IMBH regime and could be the one of the lowest reported so far. Estimates from
other approaches (e.g., fundamental plane, X-ray variability) also suggest
M_\rm{BH}\lesssim10^5~M_{\odot}.Similar to other BHs in bulgeless galaxies,
the discovered IMBH resides in a nuclear star cluster with mass of
. The detection of such a low-mass BH offers us an
ideal chance to study the formation and early growth of SMBH seeds, which may
result from the bar-driven inflow in late-type galaxies with a prominent bar
such as .Comment: ApJ accepted, 2 tables, 6 figure
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