The Event Horizon of M87

Abstract

The 6 billion solar mass supermassive black hole at the center of the giant elliptical galaxy M87 powers a relativistic jet. Observations at millimeter wavelengths with the Event Horizon Telescope have localized the emission from the base of this jet to angular scales comparable to the putative black hole horizon. The jet might be powered directly by an accretion disk or by electromagnetic extraction of the rotational energy of the black hole. However, even the latter mechanism requires a confining thick accretion disk to maintain the required magnetic flux near the black hole. Therefore, regardless of the jet mechanism, the observed jet power in M87 implies a certain minimum mass accretion rate. If the central compact object in M87 were not a black hole but had a surface, this accretion would result in considerable thermal near-infrared and optical emission from the surface. Current flux limits on the nucleus of M87 strongly constrain any such surface emission. This rules out the presence of a surface and thereby provides indirect evidence for an event horizon.

9 pages, 2 figures, submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (11)

• Event-horizon-scale structure in the supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Centre
• Advection-Dominated Accretion and the Black Hole Event Horizon
• Jet Launching Structure Resolved Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87
• Wormholes as Black Hole Foils
• Accretion to Magnetized Stars through the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability: Global Three-Dimensional Simulations
• Dynamics and High Energy Emission of the Flaring HST-1 Knot in the M 87 Jet
• Where are all the gravastars? Limits upon the gravastar model from accreting black holes
• Recollimation and Radiative Focusing of Relativistic Jets: Applications to Blazars and M87
• A Displaced Supermassive Black Hole in M87
• Hubble Space Telescope observations of an extraordinary flare in the M87 jet
• Remnants, Fuzzballs or Wormholes?

Cited by in corpus (35)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VI. The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring
• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. VI: Testing the Black Hole Metric
• First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Variability, Morphology, and Black Hole Mass
• Einstein-Æther Gravity in the light of Event Horizon Telescope Observations of M87*
• Faraday rotation in the jet of M87 inside the Bondi radius: indication of winds from hot accretion flows confining the relativistic jet
• Towards a Non-singular Paradigm of Black Hole Physics
• Influence of an anisotropic matter field on the shadow of a rotating black hole
• Images of magnetospheric reconnection-powered radiation around supermassive black holes
• Gravitational lensing by a Horndeski black hole
• Towards VLBI Observations of Black Hole Structure
• Gravitational Vacuum Condensate Stars
• Horizonless spacetimes as seen by present and next-generation Event Horizon Telescope arrays
• M87: a cosmic laboratory for deciphering black hole accretion and jet formation
• Shadow thermodynamics of non-linear charged Anti-de Sitter black holes
• Modeling the motion of a bright spot in jets from black holes M87* and SgrA*
• Acceleration of high energy protons in AGN relativistic jets
• Electromagnetic tests of horizonless rotating black hole mimickers
• Constraints on the black-hole charges of M87* and Sagittarius A* by changing rates of photon spheres can be relaxed
• Polarization Observations of AGN Jets: Past and Future
• Jet in jet in M87
• High energy particle collisions in static, spherically symmetric black-hole-like wormholes
• Reconciling EHT and Gas Dynamics Measurements in M87: Is the Jet Misaligned at Parsec Scales?
• Observational Signatures of Black Hole Accretion: Rotating vs. Spherical Flows with Tilted Magnetic Fields
• Centrifugal acceleration of protons by a supermassive black hole
• Echoes from beyond: Detecting gravitational-wave quantum imprints with LISA
• Gravitational lensing and shadow of charged black holes in the low-energy limit of string theory
• WISE2MBH: A scaling-based algorithm for probing supermassive black hole masses through WISE catalogues
• Observational signatures of Rotating compact objects in Plasma space-time
• Shadow of axisymmetric, stationary and asymptotically flat black holes in the presence of plasma
• Bridging Bondi and Event Horizon Scales: 3D GRMHD Simulations Reveal X-Shaped Radio Galaxy Morphology
• Shadow cast by a rotating black hole with anisotropic matter
• Constraints on horizonless objects after the EHT observation of Sagittarius A*
• Decoding Horizonless Spacetime: Plasma-Induced Features in a Rotating Wormhole Shadow