A black hole detected in the young massive LMC cluster NGC 1850

S. Saracino*, S. Kamann, M. G. Guarcello, C. Usher, N. Bastian, I. Cabrera-Ziri, M. Gieles, S. Dreizler, G. S. Da Costa, T. O. Husser, V. Hénault-Brunet

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    45 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We report on the detection of a black hole (NGC 1850 BH1) in the ∼100-Myr-old massive cluster NGC 1850 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is in a binary system with a main-sequence turn-off star (4.9 ± 0.4 M·), which is starting to fill its Roche lobe and is becoming distorted. Using 17 epochs of Very Large Telescope/Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer observations, we detected radial velocity variations exceeding 300 km s-1 associated with the target star, linked to the ellipsoidal variations measured by the fourth phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment in the optical bands. Under the assumption of a semidetached system, the simultaneous modelling of radial velocity and light curves constrains the orbital inclination of the binary to 38° ± 2°, resulting in a true mass of the unseen companion of 11.1 -2.4+2.1\M⊙. This represents the first direct dynamical detection of a black hole in a young massive cluster, opening up the possibility of studying the initial mass function and the early dynamical evolution of such compact objects in high-density environments.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)2914-2924
    Number of pages11
    JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
    Volume511
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Apr 2022

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