云南剑川金河岩体中地幔流体交代特征及其成矿意义

云南剑川金河岩体中的硅化霓辉正长斑岩含有较多的镁铁-超镁铁质深源岩石包体.岩相学研究表明,伴随交代蚀变,其主岩和各类包体岩石中普遍发育沿矿物粒间和矿物晶体裂隙或解离纹贯入或穿插的呈网状和细脉浸染状分布的黑色不透明物质.对该物质进行了电子探针及扫描电镜和能谱分析,发现其组成以微晶硅酸盐矿物为主,含少量微晶石英,尤其是含有微晶地幔标型矿物--含钛磁铁矿(或镜铁矿)和含铬自然铁;后两者与硅酸盐矿物构成超显微熔离结构交生.研究认为,这种物质组成和特征,是具超临界和熔浆性质的地幔流体的微观表现,其活动所引发的交代蚀变表现为硅化、钠化及深源包体中的暗色矿物由辉石→角闪石→黑云母的退变序列.这一地幔流体作用微观踪迹的揭示,对于分析和论证滇西地区新生代多金属成矿的深部地质作用规律具有重要的理论和现实意义.     

Intermediate-mass black holes and ultraluminous X-ray sources in the Cartwheel ring galaxy

Chandra and XMM–Newton observations of the Cartwheel galaxy show ∼17 bright X-ray sources  (≳5 × 10³⁸ erg s⁻¹)  , all within the gas-rich outer ring. We explore the hypothesis that these X-ray sources are powered by intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) accreting gas or undergoing mass transfer from a stellar companion. To this purpose, we run N -body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of the galaxy interaction which might have led to the formation of Cartwheel, tracking the dynamical evolution of two different IMBH populations: halo and disc IMBHs. Halo IMBHs cannot account for the observed X-ray sources, as only a few of them cross the outer ring. Instead, more than half of the disc IMBHs are pulled in the outer ring as a consequence of the galaxy collision. However, also in the case of disc IMBHs, accretion from surrounding gas clouds cannot account for the high luminosities of the observed sources. Finally, more than 500 disc IMBHs are required to produce ≲15 X-ray sources via mass transfer from very young stellar companions. Such number of IMBHs is very large and implies extreme assumptions. Thus, the hypothesis that all the observed X-ray sources in Cartwheel are associated with IMBHs is hardly consistent with our simulations, even if it is still possible that IMBHs account for the few (≲1–5) brightest ultraluminous X-ray sources.     

Measuring the accretion rate and kinetic luminosity functions of supermassive black holes

We derive accretion rate functions (ARFs) and kinetic luminosity functions (KLFs) for jet-launching supermassive black holes. The accretion rate as well as the kinetic power of an active galaxy is estimated from the radio emission of the jet. For compact low-power jets, we use the core radio emission while the jet power of high-power radio-loud quasars is estimated using the extended low-frequency emission to avoid beaming effects. We find that at low luminosities the ARF derived from the radio emission is in agreement with the measured bolometric luminosity function (BLF) of active galactic nucleus (AGN), i.e. all low-luminosity AGN launch strong jets. We present a simple model, inspired by the analogy between X-ray binaries (XRBs) and AGN, that can reproduce both the measured ARF of jet-emitting sources as well as the BLF. The model suggests that the break in power-law slope of the BLF is due to the inefficient accretion of strongly sub-Eddington sources. As our accretion measure is based on the jet power it also allows us to calculate the KLF and therefore the total kinetic power injected by jets into the ambient medium. We compare this with the kinetic power output from supernova remnants (SNRs) and XRBs, and determine its cosmological evolution.