Accessing a New Population of Supermassive Black Holes with Extensions to the Event Horizon Telescope

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Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Xinyue Alice, Ricarte, Angelo, Pesce, Dominic W., Johnson, Michael D., Nagar, Neil, Narayan, Ramesh, Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh, Doeleman, Sheperd, Palumbo, Daniel C. M.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Zhang, Xinyue Alice
Ricarte, Angelo
Pesce, Dominic W.
Johnson, Michael D.
Nagar, Neil
Narayan, Ramesh
Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh
Doeleman, Sheperd
Palumbo, Daniel C. M.
author_facet Zhang, Xinyue Alice
Ricarte, Angelo
Pesce, Dominic W.
Johnson, Michael D.
Nagar, Neil
Narayan, Ramesh
Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh
Doeleman, Sheperd
Palumbo, Daniel C. M.
contents The Event Horizon Telescope has produced resolved images of the supermassive black holes Sgr A* and M87*, which present the largest shadows on the sky. In the next decade, technological improvements and extensions to the array will enable access to a greater number of sources, unlocking studies of a larger population of supermassive black holes through direct imaging. In this paper, we identify 12 of the most promising sources beyond Sgr A* and M87* based on their angular size and millimeter flux density. For each of these sources, we make theoretical predictions for their observable properties by ray tracing general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic models appropriately scaled to each target's mass, distance, and flux density. We predict that these sources would have somewhat higher Eddington ratios than M87*, which may result in larger optical and Faraday depths than previous EHT targets. Despite this, we find that visibility amplitude size constraints can plausibly recover masses within a factor of 2, although the unknown jet contribution remains a significant uncertainty. We find that the linearly polarized structure evolves substantially with Eddington ratio, with greater evolution at larger inclinations, complicating potential spin inferences for inclined sources. We discuss the importance of 345 GHz observations, milli-Jansky baseline sensitivity, and independent inclination constraints for future observations with upgrades to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) through ground updates with the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) program and extensions to space through the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_17754
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Accessing a New Population of Supermassive Black Holes with Extensions to the Event Horizon Telescope
Zhang, Xinyue Alice
Ricarte, Angelo
Pesce, Dominic W.
Johnson, Michael D.
Nagar, Neil
Narayan, Ramesh
Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh
Doeleman, Sheperd
Palumbo, Daniel C. M.
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The Event Horizon Telescope has produced resolved images of the supermassive black holes Sgr A* and M87*, which present the largest shadows on the sky. In the next decade, technological improvements and extensions to the array will enable access to a greater number of sources, unlocking studies of a larger population of supermassive black holes through direct imaging. In this paper, we identify 12 of the most promising sources beyond Sgr A* and M87* based on their angular size and millimeter flux density. For each of these sources, we make theoretical predictions for their observable properties by ray tracing general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic models appropriately scaled to each target's mass, distance, and flux density. We predict that these sources would have somewhat higher Eddington ratios than M87*, which may result in larger optical and Faraday depths than previous EHT targets. Despite this, we find that visibility amplitude size constraints can plausibly recover masses within a factor of 2, although the unknown jet contribution remains a significant uncertainty. We find that the linearly polarized structure evolves substantially with Eddington ratio, with greater evolution at larger inclinations, complicating potential spin inferences for inclined sources. We discuss the importance of 345 GHz observations, milli-Jansky baseline sensitivity, and independent inclination constraints for future observations with upgrades to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) through ground updates with the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) program and extensions to space through the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX).
title Accessing a New Population of Supermassive Black Holes with Extensions to the Event Horizon Telescope
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17754