Black hole spin from wobbling and rotation of the M87 jet and a sign of a magnetically arrested disc

Abstract

New long-term Very Long Baseline Array observations of the well-known jet in the M87 radio galaxy at 43 GHz show that the jet experiences a sideways shift with an approximately 8-10 yr quasi-periodicity. Such jet wobbling can be indicative of a relativistic Lense-Thirring precession resulting from a tilted accretion disc. The wobbling period together with up-to-date kinematic data on jet rotation opens up the possibility for estimating angular momentum of the central supermassive black hole. In the case of a test-particle precession, the specific angular momentum is $J/Mc=(2.7\pm 1.5)\times 10^{14}$ cm, implying moderate dimensionless spin parameters $a=0.5\pm 0.3$ and $0.31\pm 0.17$ for controversial gas-dynamic and stellar-dynamic black hole masses. However, in the case of a solid-body-like precession, the spin parameter is much smaller for both masses, $0.15\pm 0.05$. Rejecting this value on the basis of other independent spin estimations requires the existence of a magnetically arrested disc in M87.

arXiv comment6 pages

References in corpus (45)

• Efficient Generation of Jets from Magnetically Arrested Accretion on a Rapidly Spinning Black Hole
• General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Magnetically Choked Accretion Flows around Black Holes
• HARM: A Numerical Scheme for General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics
• Magnetically Arrested Disk: An Energetically Efficient Accretion Flow
• The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. V. Measurement and Recalibration of Surface Brightness Fluctuations and a Precise Value of the Fornax--Virgo Relative Distance
• The Black-Hole Mass in M87 from Gemini/NIFS Adaptive Optics Observations
• Low frequency QPO spectra and Lense-Thirring precession
• Measuring Black Hole Spin using X-ray Reflection Spectroscopy
• Jet Launching Structure Resolved Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87
• Global General Relativistic MHD Simulation of a Tilted Black-Hole Accretion Disk
• Formation of Precessing Jets by Tilted Black-hole Discs in 3D General Relativistic MHD Simulations
• The Structure and Dynamics of the Sub-parsec Scale Jet in M87 Based on 50 VLBA Observations Over 17 Years at 43 GHz
• Magnetically Driven Jets in the Kerr Metric
• General relativistic magnetohydrodynamical simulations of the jet in M87
• The M87 Black Hole Mass from Gas-dynamical Models of Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Observations
• The Structure of the M87 Jet: A Transition from Parabolic to Conical Streamlines
• Kinematics of the jet in M87 on scales of 100 -- 1000 Schwarzschild radii
• Radio Imaging of the Very-High-Energy Gamma-Ray Emission Region in the Central Engine of a Radio Galaxy
• The Inner Jet of the Radio Galaxy M87
• Magnetically Arrested Disks and Origin of Poynting Jets: Numerical Study
• The 2010 very high energy gamma-ray flare & 10 years of multi-wavelength observations of M 87
• Chandra X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy of the M87 Jet and Nucleus
• High-Sensitivity 86GHz (3.5mm) VLBI Observations of M87: Deep Imaging of the Jet Base at a 10 Schwarzschild-Radius Resolution
• The central parsecs of M87: jet emission and an elusive accretion disc
• Inside the Bondi radius of M87
• Hydrodynamic Simulations of Tilted Thick-Disk Accretion onto a Kerr Black Hole
• Disk-Jet Coupling in Black Hole Accretion Systems I: General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamical Models
• The Inner Halo of M87: A First Direct View of the Red-Giant Population
• Synchrotron radiation of self-collimating relativistic MHD jets
• Lense-Thirring precession around supermassive black holes during tidal disruption events
• Stability Properties of Strongly Magnetized Spine Sheath Relativistic Jets
• Optical Polarization and Spectral Variability in the M87 Jet
• Constraining spins of supermassive black holes from TeV variability. II. fully general relativistic calculations
• An Attempt to Probe the Radio Jet Collimation Regions in NGC 4278, NGC 4374 (M84), and NGC 6166
• A strong radio brightening at the jet base of M87 during the elevated very-high-energy gamma-ray state in 2012
• On the different flavours of Lense-Thirring precession around accreting stellar mass black holes
• Constraint on the black-hole spin of M87 from the accretion-jet model
• Spins of the supermassive black hole in M87: new constraints from TeV observations
• Multi-Wavelength Polarimetry and Spectral Study of M87 Jet During 2002-2008
• Hard X-ray Emission from the M87 AGN Detected with NuSTAR
• Microscopic Processes in Global Relativistic Jets Containing Helical Magnetic Fields: Dependence on Jet Radius
• Jet in jet in M87
• Constraints on the radio loud/radio quiet dichotomy from the fundamental plane
• Numerical Modeling of Multi-wavelength Spectra of M87 Core Emission
• Polynomial approximation of the Lense-Thirring rigid precession frequency

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Testing the rotational nature of the supermassive object M87* from the circularity and size of its first image
• Measurement of the spin of the M87 black hole from its observed twisted light
• No-Hair Theorem in the Wake of Event Horizon Telescope
• Silhouettes of invisible black holes
• The brightest point in accretion disk and black hole spin: implication to the image of black hole M87*
• The Spin of M87*
• Periodic fast radio bursts from forcedly precessing neutron stars, anomalous torque, and internal magnetic field for FRB 180916.J0158+65 and FRB 121102
• Spins of supermassive black holes M87* and SgrA* revealed from the size of dark spots in Event Horizon Telescope Images
• Spin of the M87 black hole
• The Lense-Thirring effect at work in M87${}^{\ast }$
• Relativistic polytrope from the collimation and acceleration profiles of the M87 jet at subparsec scales and thermodynamic evidence for the Blandford-Znajek mechanism
• The no-hair theorems at work in M87${}^{\ast }$