Resolving accretion flows in nearby active galactic nuclei with the Event Horizon Telescope

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), now with its first ever image of the photon ring around the supermassive black hole of M87, provides a unique opportunity to probe the physics of supermassive black holes through Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), such as the existence of the event horizon, the accretion processes as well as jet formation in Low Luminosity AGN (LLAGN). We build a theoretical model which includes an Advection Dominated Accretion Flow (ADAF) with emission from thermal and non-thermal electrons in the flow and a simple radio jet outflow. The predicted spectral energy distribution (SED) of this model is compared to sub-arcsec resolution observations to get the best estimates of the model parameters. The model-predicted radial emission profiles at different frequency bands are used to predict whether the inflow can be resolved by the EHT or with telescopes such as the Global 3-mm VLBI array (GMVA). In this work the model is initially tested with high resolution SED data of M87 and then applied to our sample of 5 galaxies (Cen A, M84, NGC 4594, NGC 3998 and NGC 4278). The model then allows us to predict if one can detect and resolve the inflow for any of these galaxies using the EHT or GMVA within an 8 hour integration time.

17 pages, 8 figures. Published in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Nonthermal processes in hot accretion flows onto supermassive black holes: An inhomogeneous model
• Testing the linear relationship between black hole mass and variability timescale in low-luminosity AGN at submillimeter wavelengths
• The putative center in NGC 1052
• Multifrequency Very Long Baseline Interferometry Imaging of the Subparsec-scale Jet in the Sombrero Galaxy (M104)
• Tracking X-ray Variability in Next Generation EHT LLAGN Targets
• Improved model of X-ray emission from hot accretion flows
• Interpreting Swift and NuSTAR Observations of the Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus NGC 4278 with Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flows and Implications for Neutrino Emission
• General relativistic radiation transport: Implications for VLBI/EHT observations of AGN discs, winds and jets