Verification of radiative transfer schemes for the EHT
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Authors
Gold, Roman
Broderick, Avery E.
Younsi, Ziri
Fromm, Christian M.
Gammie, Charles F.
Mościbrodzka, Monika
Pu, Hung-Yi
Bronzwaer, Thomas
Davelaar, Jordy
Dexter, Jason
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Accepted manuscript
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Citation
Roman Gold, Avery E Broderick, Ziri Younsi, Christian M Fromm, Charles F Gammie, Monika Mościbrodzka, Hung-Yi Pu, Thomas Bronzwaer, Jordy Davelaar, Jason Dexter, David Ball, Chi-kwan Chan, Tomohisa Kawashima, Yosuke Mizuno, Bart Ripperda, Kazunori Akiyama, Antxon Alberdi, Walter Alef, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, Anne-Kathrin Baczko, Mislav Baloković, John Barrett, Dan Bintley, Lindy Blackburn, Wilfred Boland, Katherine L Bouman, Geoffrey C Bower, Michael Bremer, Christiaan D Brinkerink, Roger Brissenden, Silke Britzen, Dominique Broguiere, Do-Young Byun, John E Carlstrom, Andrew Chael, Koushik Chatterjee, Shami Chatterjee, Ming-Tang Chen, Yongjun Chen, Ilje Cho, Pierre Christian, John E Conway, James M Cordes, Geoffrey B Crew, Yuzhu Cui, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jessica Dempsey, Gregory Desvignes, Sheperd S Doeleman, Ralph P Eatough, Heino Falcke, Vincent L Fish, Ed Fomalont, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, Bill Freeman, Per Friberg, José L Gómez, Peter Galison, Roberto García, Olivier Gentaz, Boris Georgiev, Ciriaco Goddi, Minfeng Gu, Mark Gurwell, Kazuhiro Hada, Michael H Hecht, Ronald Hesper, Luis C Ho, Paul Ho, Mareki Honma, Chih-Wei L Huang, Lei Huang, David H Hughes, Makoto Inoue, Sara Issaoun, David J James, Buell T Jannuzi, Michael Janssen, Britton Jeter, Wu Jiang, Alejandra Jimenez-Rosales, Michael D Johnson, Svetlana Jorstad, Taehyun Jung, Mansour Karami, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Garrett K Keating, Mark Kettenis, Jae-Young Kim, Junhan Kim, Jongsoo Kim, Motoki Kino, Jun Yi Koay, Patrick M Koch, Shoko Koyama, Michael Kramer, Carsten Kramer, Thomas P Krichbaum, Cheng-Yu Kuo, Tod R Lauer, Sang-Sung Lee, Yan-Rong Li, Zhiyuan Li, Rocco Lico, Michael Lindqvist, Kuo Liu, Elisabetta Liuzzo, Wen-Ping Lo, Andrei P Lobanov, Laurent Loinard, Colin Lonsdale, Ru-Sen Lu, Nicholas R MacDonald, Sera Markoff, Jirong Mao, Daniel P Marrone, Alan P Marscher, Iván Martí-Vidal, Satoki Matsushita, Lynn D Matthews, Lia Medeiros, Karl M Menten, Izumi Mizuno, James M Moran, Kotaro Moriyama, Cornelia Müller, Hiroshi Nagai, Masanori Nakamura, Neil M Nagar, Ramesh Narayan, Gopal Narayanan, Iniyan Natarajan, Roberto Neri, Chunchong Ni, Aristeidis Noutsos, Hiroki Okino, Gisela N Ortiz-León, Tomoaki Oyama, Feryal Özel, Daniel CM Palumbo, Jongho Park, Nimesh Patel, Ue-Li Pen, Dominic W Pesce, Richard Plambeck, Vincent Piétu, Aleksandar PopStefanija, Oliver Porth, Jorge A Preciado-López, Dimitrios Psaltis, Venkatessh Ramakrishnan, Ramprasad Rao, Mark G Rawlings, Alexander W Raymond, Luciano Rezzolla, Freek Roelofs, Alan Rogers, Eduardo Ros, Mel Rose, Arash Roshanineshat, Helge Rottmann, Alan L Roy, Chet Ruszczyk, Kazi LJ Rygl, Salvador Sánchez, David Sánchez-Arguelles, Mahito Sasada, Tuomas Savolainen, Karl-Friedrich Schuster, F Peter Schloerb, Lijing Shao, Zhiqiang Shen, Des Small, Bong Won Sohn, Jason SooHoo, Paul Tiede, Fumie Tazaki, Remo PJ Tilanus, Michael Titus, Kenji Toma, Pablo Torne, Tyler Trent, Thalia Traianou, Sascha Trippe, Shuichiro Tsuda, Huib Jan van Langevelde, Ilse van Bemmel, Daniel R van Rossum, Jan Wagner, John Wardle, Norbert Wex, Jonathan Weintroub, Robert Wharton, Maciek Wielgus, George N Wong, Qingwen Wu, Doosoo Yoon, Ken Young, André Young, Feng Yuan, Ye-Fei Yuan, J Anton Zensus, Guangyao Zhao, Shan-Shan Zhao, Ziyan Zhu. "Verification of Radiative Transfer Schemes for the EHT." The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 897, Issue 2, pp. 148 - 148. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab96c6
Abstract
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has recently produced the first resolved images of the central supermassive black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M87. Here we report on tests of the consistency and accuracy of the general relativistic radiative transfer codes used within the collaboration to model M87* and Sgr A*. We compare and evaluate (1) deflection angles for equatorial null geodesics in a Kerr spacetime; (2) images calculated from a series of simple, parameterized matter distributions in the Kerr metric using simplified emissivities and absorptivities; (3) for a subset of codes, images calculated from general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations using different realistic synchrotron emissivities and absorptivities; (4) observables for the 2017 configuration of EHT, including visibility amplitudes and closure phases. The error in total flux is of order 1% when the codes are run with production numerical parameters. The dominant source of discrepancies for small camera distances is the location and detailed setup of the software "camera" that each code uses to produce synthetic images. We find that when numerical parameters are suitably chosen and the camera is sufficiently far away the images converge and that for given transfer coefficients, numerical uncertainties are unlikely to limit parameter estimation for the current generation of EHT observations. The purpose of this paper is to describe a verification and comparison of EHT radiative transfer codes. It is not to verify EHT models more generally.