The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced images of the plasma flow around the supermassive black holes in Sgr A* and M87* with a resolution comparable to the projected size of their event horizons. Observations with the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) will have significantly improved Fourier plane coverage and will be conducted at multiple frequency bands (86, 230, and 345 GHz), each with a wide bandwidth. At these frequencies, both Sgr A* and M87* transition from optically thin to optically thick. Resolved spectral index maps in the near-horizon and jet-launching regions of these supermassive black hole sources can constrain properties of the emitting plasma that are degenerate in single-frequency images. In addition, combining information from data obtained at multiple frequencies is a powerful tool for interferometric image reconstruction, since gaps in spatial scales in single-frequency observations can be filled in with information from other frequencies. Here we present a new method of simultaneously reconstructing interferometric images at multiple frequencies along with their spectral index maps. The method is based on existing regularized maximum likelihood (RML) methods commonly used for EHT imaging and is implemented in the
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has released analyses of reconstructed images of horizon-scale millimeter emission near the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy. Parts of the analyses made use of a large library of synthetic black hole images and spectra, which were produced using numerical general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics fluid simulations and polarized ray tracing. In this article, we describe the
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10486420
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3847
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
- Volume:
- 259
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0067-0049
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 64
- Size(s):
- ["Article No. 64"]
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract eht-imaging Python software library. We show results of this method on simulated ngEHT data sets as well as on real data from the Very Long Baseline Array and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. These examples demonstrate that simultaneous RML multifrequency image reconstruction produces higher-quality and more scientifically useful results than is possible from combining independent image reconstructions at each frequency. -
Abstract The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced images of M87* and Sagittarius A*, and will soon produce time sequences of images, or movies. In anticipation of this, we describe a technique to measure the rotation rate, or pattern speed Ω
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Abstract We present a new reconstruction of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) image of the M87 black hole from the 2017 data set. We use
PRIMO , a novel dictionary-learning-based algorithm that uses high-fidelity simulations of accreting black holes as a training set. By learning the correlations between the different regions of the space of interferometric data, this approach allows us to recover high-fidelity images even in the presence of sparse coverage and reach the nominal resolution of the EHT array. The black hole image comprises a thin bright ring with a diameter of 41.5 ± 0.6μ as and a fractional width that is at least a factor of 2 smaller than previously reported. This improvement has important implications for measuring the mass of the central black hole in M87 based on the EHT images. -
Abstract The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced images of two supermassive black holes, Messier 87* (M 87*) and Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). The EHT collaboration used these images to indirectly constrain black hole parameters by calibrating measurements of the sky-plane emission morphology to images of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations. Here, we develop a model for directly constraining the black hole mass, spin, and inclination through signatures of lensing, redshift, and frame dragging, while simultaneously marginalizing over the unknown accretion and emission properties. By assuming optically thin, axisymmetric, equatorial emission near the black hole, our model gains orders of magnitude in speed over similar approaches that require radiative transfer. Using 2017 EHT M 87* baseline coverage, we use fits of the model to itself to show that the data are insufficient to demonstrate existence of the photon ring. We then survey time-averaged GRMHD simulations fitting EHT-like data, and find that our model is best-suited to fitting magnetically arrested disks, which are the favored class of simulations for both M 87* and Sgr A*. For these simulations, the best-fit model parameters are within ∼10% of the true mass and within ∼10° for inclination. With 2017 EHT coverage and 1% fractional uncertainty on amplitudes, spin is unconstrained. Accurate inference of spin axis position angle depends strongly on spin and electron temperature. Our results show the promise of directly constraining black hole spacetimes with interferometric data, but they also show that nearly identical images permit large differences in black hole properties, highlighting degeneracies between the plasma properties, spacetime, and, most crucially, the unknown emission geometry when studying lensed accretion flow images at a single frequency.
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Abstract The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) recently released the first linearly polarized images of the accretion flow around the supermassive black hole Messier 87*, hereafter M87*. The spiraling polarization pattern found in the EHT images favored magnetically arrested disks as the explanation for the EHT image. With next-generation improvements to very long baseline interferometry on the horizon, understanding similar polarized features in the highly lensed structure known as the “photon ring,” where photons make multiple half orbits about the black hole before reaching the observer, will be critical to the analysis of future images. Recent work has indicated that this image region may be depolarized relative to more direct emission. We expand this observation by decomposing photon half orbits in the EHT library of simulated images of the M 87* accretion system and find that images of magnetically arrested disk simulations show a relative depolarization of the photon ring attributable to destructive interference of oppositely spiraling electric field vectors; this antisymmetry, which arises purely from strong gravitational lensing, can produce up to ∼50% depolarization in the photon ring region with respect to the direct image. In systems that are not magnetically arrested and with the exception of systems with high spin and ions and electrons of equal temperature, we find that highly lensed indirect subimages are almost completely depolarized, causing a modest depolarization of the photon ring region in the complete image. We predict that next-generation EHT observations of M 87* polarization should jointly constrain the black hole spin and the underlying emission and magnetic field geometry.