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arXiv · 1209.3883

Confirming the 115.5-day periodicity in the X-ray light curve of ULX NGC 5408 X-1

Xu Han·Tao An·Jun-Yi Wang·Ji-Ming Lin·Ming-Jie Xie·Hai-Guang Xu·Xiao-Yu Hong·Sandor Frey
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Abstract

The Swift/XRT light curve of the ultraluminous X-ray (ULX) source NGC 5408 X-1 was re-analyzed with two new numerical approaches, Weighted Wavelet $Z$-transform (WWZ) and CLEANest, that are different from previous studies. Both techniques detected a prominent periodicity with a time scale of $115.5\pm1.5$ days, in excellent agreement with the detection of the same periodicity first reported by Strohmayer (2009). Monte Carlo simulation was employed to test the statisiticak confidence of the 115.5-day periodicity, yielding a statistical significance of $> 99.98%$ (or $>3.8\sigma$). The robust detection of the 115.5-day quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs), if it is due to the orbital motion of the binary, would infer a mass of a few thousand $M_\odot$ for the central black hole, implying an intermediate-mass black hole in NGC 5408 X-1.

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Xu Han, Tao An, Jun-Yi Wang, Ji-Ming Lin, Ming-Jie Xie, Hai-Guang Xu, Xiao-Yu Hong, Sandor Frey. 2012-09-18. Confirming the 115.5-day periodicity in the X-ray light curve of ULX NGC 5408 X-1. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/12/12/001

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