Universal interferometric signatures of a black hole’s photon ring

Johnson, Michael D.; Lupsasca, Alexandru; Strominger, Andrew; Wong, George N.; Hadar, Shahar; Kapec, Daniel; Narayan, Ramesh; Chael, Andrew; Gammie, Charles F.; Galison, Peter; Palumbo, Daniel C.  M.; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Blackburn, Lindy; Wielgus, Maciek; Pesce, Dominic W.; Farah, Joseph R.; Moran, James M.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz1310

Title: Universal interferometric signatures of a black hole’s photon ring

Journal Article · Wed Mar 18 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Science Advances

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz1310· OSTI ID:1631981

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^[2]; Strominger, Andrew ^[2];

^[3]; Hadar, Shahar ^[2];

^[4]; Narayan, Ramesh ^[1];

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^[6]; Galison, Peter ^[2]; Palumbo, Daniel C. M. ^[1];

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Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States)
Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (United States). School of Natural Sciences
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States); Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States); Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston, MA (United States)

The Event Horizon Telescope image of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 is dominated by a bright, unresolved ring. General relativity predicts that embedded within this image lies a thin “photon ring,” which is composed of an infinite sequence of self-similar subrings that are indexed by the number of photon orbits around the black hole. The subrings approach the edge of the black hole “shadow,” becoming exponentially narrower but weaker with increasing orbit number, with seemingly negligible contributions from high-order subrings. Here, we show that these subrings produce strong and universal signatures on long interferometric baselines. These signatures offer the possibility of precise measurements of black hole mass and spin, as well as tests of general relativity, using only a sparse interferometric array.

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Research Organization:: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (United States); Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Science Foundation (NSF); Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Harvard University; John Templeton Foundation

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0009988; SC0007870; AST-1440254; AST-1716536; AST-1716327; OISE-1743747; PHY-1205550; GBMF-5278; HST-HF2-51431.001-A; 60477

OSTI ID:: 1631981

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1626057

Journal Information:: Science Advances, Vol. 6, Issue 12; ISSN 2375-2548

Publisher:: AAASCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 144 works

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References (33)

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