The Photon Ring in M87*
Journal article, 2022
We report measurements of the gravitationally lensed secondary image—the first in an infinite series of so-called “photon rings”—around the supermassive black hole M87* via simultaneous modeling and imaging of the 2017 Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations. The inferred ring size remains constant across the seven days of the 2017 EHT observing campaign and is consistent with theoretical expectations, providing clear evidence that such measurements probe spacetime and a striking confirmation of the models underlying the first set of EHT results. The residual diffuse emission evolves on timescales comparable to one week. We are able to detect with high significance a southwestern extension consistent with that expected from the base of a jet that is rapidly rotating in the clockwise direction. This result adds further support to the identification of the jet in M87* with a black hole spin-driven outflow, launched via the Blandford-Znajek process. We present three revised estimates for the mass of M87* based on identifying the modeled thin ring component with the bright ringlike features seen in simulated images, one of which is only weakly sensitive to the astrophysics of the emission region. All three estimates agree with each other and previously reported values. Our strongest mass constraint combines information from both the ring and the diffuse emission region, which together imply a mass-to-distance ratio of 4.20 − 0.06 + 0.12 μ as and a corresponding black hole mass of (7.13 ± 0.39) × 109 M ⊙, where the error on the latter is now dominated by the systematic uncertainty arising from the uncertain distance to M87*.
Author
Avery E. Broderick
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
University of Waterloo
Dominic W. Pesce
Harvard University
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
R. Gold
University of Southern Denmark
Paul Tiede
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Harvard University
University of Waterloo
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Hung-Yi Pu
National Taiwan Normal University
National Center for Theoretical Sciences Taiwan
Academia Sinica
Richard Anantua
Harvard University
The University of Texas at San Antonio
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Silke Britzen
Max Planck Society
Chiara Ceccobello
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Astronomy and Plasmaphysics
Koushik Chatterjee
Harvard University
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Yongjun Chen
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Nicholas S. Conroy
University of Illinois
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
G. Crew
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Alejandro Cruz-Osorio
Goethe University Frankfurt
Yuzhu Cui
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)
S. Doeleman
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Harvard University
Razieh Emami
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Joseph R. Farah
Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network
University of California
Christian M. Fromm
Goethe University Frankfurt
University of Würzburg
Max Planck Society
Peter Galison
Harvard University
Boris Georgiev
University of Waterloo
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Luis C. Ho
Beijing University of Technology
David J. James
ASTRAVEO
Britton Jeter
Academia Sinica
Alejandra Jimenez-Rosales
Radboud University
Jun Yi Koay
Academia Sinica
C. Kramer
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM)
T.P. Krichbaum
Max Planck Society
Sang Sung Lee
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
University of Science and Technology (UST)
Michael Lindqvist
Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Onsala Space Observatory
Ivan Marti-Vidal
Universitat de Valencia
K. Menten
Max Planck Society
Yosuke Mizuno
Goethe University Frankfurt
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
James M. Moran
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Harvard University
M. Mościbrodzka
Radboud University
Antonios Nathanail
Goethe University Frankfurt
Joseph Neilsen
Villanova University
Chunchong Ni
University of Waterloo
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Jongho Park
Academia Sinica
Vincent Piétu
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (IRAM)
Luciano Rezzolla
Goethe University Frankfurt
Angelo Ricarte
Harvard University
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Bart Ripperda
Flatiron Institute
Princeton University
Lijing Shao
Beijing University of Technology
Max Planck Society
Fumie Tazaki
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Kenji Toma
Tohoku University
Pablo Torne
Max Planck Society
J. Weintroub
Harvard University
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
M. Wielgus
Max Planck Society
Feng Yuan
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shan-Shan Zhao
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shuo Zhang
Bard College
Astrophysical Journal
0004-637X (ISSN) 1538-4357 (eISSN)
Vol. 935 1 61Subject Categories (SSIF 2011)
Subatomic Physics
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Computer Vision and Robotics (Autonomous Systems)
DOI
10.3847/1538-4357/ac7c1d