Near-Horizon Polarization as a Diagnostic of Black Hole Spacetime
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| author | Hou, Yehui Huang, Jiewei Guo, Minyong Mizuno, Yosuke Chen, Bin |
| author_facet | Hou, Yehui Huang, Jiewei Guo, Minyong Mizuno, Yosuke Chen, Bin |
| contents | A key challenge in imaging supermassive black holes is disentangling gravitational effects from plasma physics in order to accurately determine spacetime properties, particularly black hole spin. In this Letter, we present a fully covariant and rigorous analysis of the synchrotron emission from accreting plasma in the equatorial plane in the stationary, axisymmetric, high-conductivity regime, and identify--for the first time--a distinctive near-horizon polarization pattern that remains robust across different flow structures. This pattern arises from strong frame dragging near the event horizon, which induces a degeneracy among plasma flow and magnetic field configurations, yielding a polarization signature determined solely by the spacetime geometry and the observer's inclination. The near-horizon polarization thus offers a clean and precise probe of black hole spin and other fundamental parameters. If future space-based millimeter VLBI observations can resolve synchrotron emission originating within approximately 1$\%$ of the event horizon radius in M87* or Sgr A*, this universal polarization pattern may become observable. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_07248 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Near-Horizon Polarization as a Diagnostic of Black Hole Spacetime Hou, Yehui Huang, Jiewei Guo, Minyong Mizuno, Yosuke Chen, Bin General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena A key challenge in imaging supermassive black holes is disentangling gravitational effects from plasma physics in order to accurately determine spacetime properties, particularly black hole spin. In this Letter, we present a fully covariant and rigorous analysis of the synchrotron emission from accreting plasma in the equatorial plane in the stationary, axisymmetric, high-conductivity regime, and identify--for the first time--a distinctive near-horizon polarization pattern that remains robust across different flow structures. This pattern arises from strong frame dragging near the event horizon, which induces a degeneracy among plasma flow and magnetic field configurations, yielding a polarization signature determined solely by the spacetime geometry and the observer's inclination. The near-horizon polarization thus offers a clean and precise probe of black hole spin and other fundamental parameters. If future space-based millimeter VLBI observations can resolve synchrotron emission originating within approximately 1$\%$ of the event horizon radius in M87* or Sgr A*, this universal polarization pattern may become observable. |
| title | Near-Horizon Polarization as a Diagnostic of Black Hole Spacetime |
| topic | General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.07248 |