Optical emission from massive donors in ULX binary systems

TL;DR

This paper models the evolution and optical emission of high-mass donor star binaries with black holes to help identify and constrain properties of ultraluminous X-ray source counterparts.

Contribution

It provides detailed evolutionary tracks and optical spectra simulations for massive black hole binaries, aiding in the characterization of ULX donor stars.

Findings

Some candidate counterparts can be ruled out based on their color-magnitude positions.

The models help constrain donor star masses in ULX systems.

Optical spectra evolution offers insights into binary system properties.

Abstract

We present evolutionary tracks of binary systems with high mass companion stars and stellar-through-intermediate mass BHs. Using Eggleton's stellar evolution code, we compute the luminosity produced by accretion from the donor during its entire evolution. We compute also the evolution of the optical spectrum of the binary system taking the disc contribution and irradiation effects into account. The calculations presented here can be used to constrain the properties of the donor stars in Ultraluminous X-ray Sources by comparing their position on the HR or color-magnitude diagrams with the evolutionary tracks of massive BH binaries. This approach may actually provide interesting clues also on the properties of the binary system itself, including the BH mass. We found that, on the basis of their position on the color-magnitude diagram, some of the candidate counterparts considered can be ruled out and more stringent constraints can be applied to the donor masses.