A Fallback Disk Model for Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources

Abstract

Current stellar evolution models predict that during the core collapse of massive stars, a considerable amount of the stellar material will fall back onto the compact, collapsed remnants (neutron stars or black holes), usually in the form of an accretion disk. This triggers rapid mass accretion onto, e.g., the black hole, and produces energetic explosions known as Gamma-ray bursts. However it is very difficult to prove the existence of an accretion disk around newborn black holes observationally. Here we demonstrate that some of the ultraluminous X-ray sources in nearby galaxies, which are associated with supernova remnants, may be black holes accreting from their fallback disks, i.e., they have evolved from collapsars. Since it is almost certain that there is an accretion disk around these black holes, this would for the first time lend the observational support to the collapsar model.