Return to the forgotten ULX: a broadband NICER+NuSTAR study of NGC 4190 ULX-1

Abstract

We observed the nearby and relatively understudied ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) NGC 4190 ULX-1 jointly with Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) and NuSTAR to investigate its broadband spectrum, timing properties, and spectral variation over time. We found NGC 4190 ULX-1 to have a hard spectrum characterized by two thermal components (with temperatures ∼0.25 and ∼1.6 keV) and a high-energy excess typical of the ULX population although the spectrum turns over at an unusually low energy. While no pulsations were detected (with pulsed fraction 3σ upper limits of 16% for NICER and 35% for NuSTAR), the source shows significant stochastic variability, and the covariance spectrum indicates the presence of a high-energy cutoff power-law component, potentially indicative of an accretion column. Additionally, when fitting archival XMM-Newton data with a similar model, we find that the luminosity–temperature evolution of the hot thermal component follows the behavior of a super-Eddington slim disk though the expected spectral broadening for such a disk is not seen, suggesting that the inner accretion disk may be truncated by a magnetic field. Therefore, despite the lack of detected pulsations, there is tantalizing evidence for NGC 4190 ULX-1 being a candidate neutron star accretor although further broadband observations will be required to confirm this behavior.

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