First M87 Event Horizon Telescope results. V. Physical origin of the asymmetric ring
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Akiyama, Kazunori
Alberdi, Antxon
Alef, Walter
Asada, Keiichi
Azulay, Rebecca
Baczko, Anne-Kathrin
Ball, David
Baloković, Mislav
Barrett, John
Bintley, Dan
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Kazunori Akiyama, Antxon Alberdi, Walter Alef, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, Anne-Kathrin Baczko, David Ball, 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, Avery E Broderick, Dominique Broguiere, Thomas Bronzwaer, Do-Young Byun, John E Carlstrom, Andrew Chael, Chi-kwan Chan, Shami Chatterjee, Koushik Chatterjee, Ming-Tang Chen, Yongjun Chen, Ilje Cho, Pierre Christian, John E Conway, James M Cordes, Geoffrey B Crew, Yuzhu Cui, Jordy Davelaar, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jessica Dempsey, Gregory Desvignes, Jason Dexter, Sheperd S Doeleman, Ralph P Eatough, Heino Falcke, Vincent L Fish, Ed Fomalont, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, Per Friberg, Christian M Fromm, José L Gómez, Peter Galison, Charles F Gammie, Roberto García, Olivier Gentaz, Boris Georgiev, Ciriaco Goddi, Roman Gold, 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, Shiro Ikeda, Makoto Inoue, Sara Issaoun, David J James, Buell T Jannuzi, Michael Janssen, Britton Jeter, Wu Jiang, Michael D Johnson, Svetlana Jorstad, Taehyun Jung, Mansour Karami, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Tomohisa Kawashima, 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, Michael Lindqvist, Kuo Liu, Elisabetta Liuzzo, Wen-Ping Lo, Andrei P Lobanov, Laurent Loinard, Colin Lonsdale, Ru-Sen Lu, Nicholas R MacDonald, Jirong Mao, Sera Markoff, Daniel P Marrone, Alan P Marscher, Iván Martí-Vidal, Satoki Matsushita, Lynn D Matthews, Lia Medeiros, Karl M Menten, Yosuke Mizuno, Izumi Mizuno, James M Moran, Kotaro Moriyama, Monika Moscibrodzka, Cornelia Mul̈ler, Hiroshi Nagai, Neil M Nagar, Masanori Nakamura, Ramesh Narayan, Gopal Narayanan, Iniyan Natarajan, Roberto Neri, Chunchong Ni, Aristeidis Noutsos, Hiroki Okino, Héctor Olivares, Tomoaki Oyama, Feryal Özel, Daniel CM Palumbo, Nimesh Patel, Ue-Li Pen, Dominic W Pesce, Vincent Piétu, Richard Plambeck, Aleksandar PopStefanija, Oliver Porth, Ben Prather, Jorge A Preciado-López, Dimitrios Psaltis, Hung-Yi Pu, Venkatessh Ramakrishnan, Ramprasad Rao, Mark G Rawlings, Alexander W Raymond, Luciano Rezzolla, Bart Ripperda, Freek Roelofs, Alan Rogers, Eduardo Ros, Mel Rose, Arash Roshanineshat, Helge Rottmann, Alan L Roy, Chet Ruszczyk, Benjamin R Ryan, Kazi LJ Rygl, Salvador Sánchez, David Sánchez-Arguelles, Mahito Sasada, Tuomas Savolainen, F Peter Schloerb, Karl-Friedrich Schuster, Lijing Shao, Zhiqiang Shen, Des Small, Bong Won Sohn, Jason SooHoo, Fumie Tazaki, Paul Tiede, Remo PJ Tilanus, Michael Titus, Kenji Toma, Pablo Torne, Tyler Trent, Sascha Trippe, Shuichiro Tsuda, Ilse van Bemmel, Huib Jan van Langevelde, Daniel R van Rossum, Jan Wagner, John Wardle, Jonathan Weintroub, Norbert Wex, Robert Wharton, Maciek Wielgus, George N Wong, Qingwen Wu, André Young, Ken Young, Ziri Younsi, Feng Yuan, Ye-Fei Yuan, J Anton Zensus, Guangyao Zhao, Shan-Shan Zhao, Ziyan Zhu, Jadyn Anczarski, Frederick K Baganoff, Andreas Eckart, Joseph R Farah, Daryl Haggard, Zheng Meyer-Zhao, Daniel Michalik, Andrew Nadolski, Joseph Neilsen, Hiroaki Nishioka, Michael A Nowak, Nicolas Pradel, Rurik A Primiani, Kamal Souccar, Laura Vertatschitsch, Paul Yamaguchi, Shuo Zhang. "First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring." The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 875, Issue 1, pp. L5 - L5. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0f43
Abstract
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has mapped the central compact radio source of the elliptical galaxy M87 at 1.3 mm with unprecedented angular resolution. Here we consider the physical implications of the asymmetric ring seen in the 2017 EHT data. To this end, we construct a large library of models based on general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations and synthetic images produced by general relativistic ray tracing. We compare the observed visibilities with this library and confirm that the asymmetric ring is consistent with earlier predictions of strong gravitational lensing of synchrotron emission from a hot plasma orbiting near the black hole event horizon. The ring radius and ring asymmetry depend on black hole mass and spin, respectively, and both are therefore expected to be stable when observed in future EHT campaigns. Overall, the observed image is consistent with expectations for the shadow of a spinning Kerr black hole as predicted by general relativity. If the black hole spin and M87's large scale jet are aligned, then the black hole spin vector is pointed away from Earth. Models in our library of non-spinning black holes are inconsistent with the observations as they do not produce sufficiently powerful jets. At the same time, in those models that produce a sufficiently powerful jet, the latter is powered by extraction of black hole spin energy through mechanisms akin to the Blandford-Znajek process. We briefly consider alternatives to a black hole for the central compact object. Analysis of existing EHT polarization data and data taken simultaneously at other wavelengths will soon enable new tests of the GRMHD models, as will future EHT campaigns at 230 and 345 GHz.
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