Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are accreting black holes for which their X-ray properties have been seen to be different to the case of stellar-mass black hole binaries. For most of the cases their intrinsic energy spectra are well described by a cold accretion disc (thermal) plus a curved high-energy emission components. The mass of the black hole (BH) derived from the thermal disc component is usually in the range of 100-1000 solar masses, which have led to the idea that this might represent strong evidence of the Intermediate Mass Black Holes (IMBH), proposed to exist by theoretical studies but with no firm detection (as a class) so far. Recent theoretical and observational developments are leading towards the idea that these sources are instead stellar-mass BHs accreting at an unusual super-Eddington regime. In this paper we brie y describe the model SLIMULX that can be used in XSPEC for the fit of thermal spectra of slim discs around stellar mass BHs in the super-Eddington regime. This model consistently takes all relativistic effects into account. We present the obtained results from the fit of the X-ray spectra from NGC 5408 X-1.

MCG, MB and MD acknowledge support provided by the European Seventh Frame-work Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n◦ 312789. SF acknowledge support by the Russian Science Foundation (N 14-50-00043).

Peer reviewed