Spacetime Tomography Using The Event Horizon Telescope

Abstract

We have now entered the new era of high-resolution imaging astronomy with the beginning of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT can resolve the dynamics of matter in the immediate vicinity around black holes at and below the horizon scale. One of the candidate black holes, Sagittarius A* flares 1\-4 times a day depending on the wavelength. A possible interpretation of these flares could be hotspots generated through magnetic reconnection events in the accretion flow. In this paper, we construct a semi-analytical model for hotspots that include the effects of shearing as a spot moves along the accretion flow. We then explore the ability of the EHT to recover these hotspots. Even including significant systematic uncertainties, such as thermal noise, diffractive scattering, and background emission due to an accretion disk, we were able to recover the hotspots and spacetime structure to sub-percent precision. Moreover, by observing multiple flaring events we show how the EHT could be used to tomographically map spacetime. This provides new avenues for testing relativistic fluid dynamics and general relativity near the event horizon of supermassive black holes.

arXiv commentAccepted to ApJ (17 pages, 15 figures) (revised edition corrected some affiliations)

References in corpus (53)

• 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. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. II. Array and Instrumentation
• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. III. Data Processing and Calibration
• Event-horizon-scale structure in the supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Centre
• Near-infrared flares from accreting gas around the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre
• Rapid X-ray flaring from the direction of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre
• Detection of orbital motions near the last stable circular orbit of the massive black hole SgrA*
• Dynamic temperature selection for parallel-tempering in Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations
• An extended scheme for fitting X-ray data with accretion disk spectra in the strong gravity regime
• High Resolution Linear Polarimetric Imaging for the Event Horizon Telescope
• Interferometric Imaging Directly with Closure Phases and Closure Amplitudes
• Imaging Optically-Thin Hot Spots Near the Black Hole Horizon of Sgr A* at Radio and Near-Infrared Wavelengths
• Testing the No-Hair Theorem with Event Horizon Telescope Observations of Sagittarius A*
• Resolved Magnetic-Field Structure and Variability Near the Event Horizon of Sagittarius A*
• An X-ray, IR, and Submillimeter Flare of Sagittarius A*
• 1.3 mm Wavelength VLBI of Sagittarius A*: Detection of Time-Variable Emission on Event Horizon Scales
• Polarimetry of near-infrared flares from Sagittarius A*
• A Chandra/HETGS Census of X-ray Variability From Sgr A* During 2012
• Imaging Bright Spots in the Accretion Flow Near the Black Hole Horizon of Sgr A*
• First Simultaneous NIR/X-ray Detection of a Flare from SgrA*
• Evidence for Low Black Hole Spin and Physically Motivated Accretion Models from Millimeter VLBI Observations of Sagittarius A*
• Imaging the Schwarzschild-radius-scale Structure of M87 with the Event Horizon Telescope using Sparse Modeling
• Testing General Relativity with the Shadow Size of Sgr A*
• The Intrinsic Size of Sagittarius A* from 0.35 cm to 6 cm
• A Quantitative Test of the No-Hair Theorem with Sgr A* using stars, pulsars, and the Event Horizon Telescope
• A near-IR variability study of the Galactic black hole: a red noise source with no detected periodicity
• The Power of Imaging: Constraining the Plasma Properties of GRMHD Simulations using EHT Observations of Sgr A*
• Plasma diagnostic potential of 2p4f in N${}^{+}$ -- accurate wavelengths and oscillator strengths
• X-ray hiccups from SgrA* observed by XMM-Newton. The second brightest flare and three moderate flares caught in half a day
• A powerful flare from Sgr A* confirms the synchrotron nature of the X-ray emission
• A General Relativistic Null Hypothesis Test with Event Horizon Telescope Observations of the black-hole shadow in Sgr A*
• The Size, Shape, and Scattering of Sagittarius A* at 86 GHz: First VLBI with ALMA
• Variability Timescale and Spectral Index of Sgr A* in the Near Infrared: Approximate Bayesian Computation Analysis of the Variability of the Closest Supermassive Black Hole
• Source-intrinsic near-infrared properties of Sgr A*: Total intensity measurements
• The Scattering and Intrinsic Structure of Sagittarius A* at Radio Wavelengths
• Modeling Seven Years of Event Horizon Telescope Observations with Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow Models
• Polarized NIR and X-ray Flares from SgrA*
• An 8 hour characteristic time-scale in submillimetre light curves of Sagittarius A*
• Persistent Asymmetric Structure of Sagittarius A* on Event Horizon Scales
• Covariant Magnetoionic Theory II: Radiative Transfer
• Testing General Relativity with Accretion-Flow Imaging of Sgr A*
• Near infrared flares of Sagittarius A*: Importance of near infrared polarimetry
• The Effects of Accretion Flow Dynamics on the Black Hole Shadow of Sagittarius A${}^{\ast }$
• Modeling mm- to X-ray flare emission from SgrA*
• A power-law break in the near-infrared power spectrum of the Galactic center black hole
• Spitzer/IRAC Observations of the Variability of Sgr A* and the Object G2 at 4.5 microns
• Multiwavelength Light Curves of Two Remarkable Sagittarius A* Flares
• The Intrinsic Shape of Sagittarius A* at 3.5-mm Wavelength
• A formal method for identifying distinct states of variability in time-varying sources: SgrA* as an example
• Study of the X-ray activity of Sgr A* during the 2011 XMM-Newton campaign

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Key Science Goals for the Next-Generation Event Horizon Telescope
• Orbital motion near Sagittarius A* -- Constraints from polarimetric ALMA observations
• Polarized Image of Equatorial Emission in the Kerr Geometry
• Photon Ring Autocorrelations
• Dynamically important magnetic fields near the event horizon of Sgr A*
• Measuring Spin from Relative Photon Ring Sizes
• Image features of spinning regular black holes based on a locality principle
• Universal signatures of singularity-resolving physics in photon rings of black holes and horizonless objects
• Polarimetric signatures of hot spots in black hole accretion flows
• Fitting the light curves of Sagittarius A* with a hot-spot model
• Bayesian Accretion Modeling: Axisymmetric Equatorial Emission in the Kerr Spacetime
• Accretion Flow Morphology in Numerical Simulations of Black Holes from the ngEHT Model Library: The Impact of Radiation Physics
• Light echos and coherent autocorrelations in a black hole spacetime
• A Lensing-Band Approach to Spacetime Constraints
• Hot-spots around Sagittarius A*: Joint fits to astrometry and polarimetry
• Dynamic and polarimetric VLBI imaging with a multiscalar approach
• Extreme lensing induces spectro-temporal correlations in black-hole signals
• Swarm intelligence for full Stokes dynamic imaging reconstruction of interferometric data
• Polarized signatures of adiabatically expanding hotspots in Sgr A*'s accretion flow
• Forward Ray Tracing and Hot Spots in Kerr Spacetime
• Inferring Black Hole Spin from Interferometric Measurements of the First Photon Ring: A Geometric Approach
• Semi-analytic studies of accretion disk and magnetic field geometry in M87*