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Published January 20, 2022 | Version Accepted Version + Published
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The Variability of the Black Hole Image in M87 at the Dynamical Timescale

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Abstract

The black hole images obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) are expected to be variable at the dynamical timescale near their horizons. For the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, this timescale (5–61 days) is comparable to the 6 day extent of the 2017 EHT observations. Closure phases along baseline triangles are robust interferometric observables that are sensitive to the expected structural changes of the images but are free of station-based atmospheric and instrumental errors. We explored the day-to-day variability in closure-phase measurements on all six linearly independent nontrivial baseline triangles that can be formed from the 2017 observations. We showed that three triangles exhibit very low day-to-day variability, with a dispersion of ∼3°–5°. The only triangles that exhibit substantially higher variability (∼90°–180°) are the ones with baselines that cross the visibility amplitude minima on the u–v plane, as expected from theoretical modeling. We used two sets of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations to explore the dependence of the predicted variability on various black hole and accretion-flow parameters. We found that changing the magnetic field configuration, electron temperature model, or black hole spin has a marginal effect on the model consistency with the observed level of variability. On the other hand, the most discriminating image characteristic of models is the fractional width of the bright ring of emission. Models that best reproduce the observed small level of variability are characterized by thin ring-like images with structures dominated by gravitational lensing effects and thus least affected by turbulence in the accreting plasmas.

Additional Information

© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2021 June 3; revised 2021 October 21; accepted 2021 October 24; published 2022 January 20. This work was supported, in part, by the NSF PIRE award 1743747 and NASA ATP award 80NSSC20K0521. L.M. acknowledges support from an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award No. AST-1903847. M.W. acknowledges the support of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to Harvard University. All ray tracing calculations for Set A were performed with the El Gato GPU cluster at the University of Arizona that is funded by NSF award 1228509. All analyses for Set B were performed on CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. The EHT Collaboration thanks the following organizations and programs: the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496, and 315721); the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo, Chile via NCN19₀₅₈ (TITANs) and Fondecyt 3190878; the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; Allegro, the European ALMA Regional Centre node in the Netherlands, the NL astronomy research network NOVA, and the astronomy institutes of the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University, and Radboud University; the black hole Initiative at Harvard University, through a grant (60477) from the John Templeton Foundation; the China Scholarship Council; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Mexico, projects U0004-246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, and 263356); the Delaney Family via the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute; Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (projects IN112417 and IN112820); the European Research Council Synergy Grant "BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes" (grant 610058); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grant GBMF-3561); the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; Joint Princeton/Flatiron and Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships; research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation; the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJSSW-SYS008, and ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship; the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG); the Max-Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS; the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grants 18KK0090, JP18K13594, JP18K03656, JP18H03721, 18K03709, 18H01245, and 25120007); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS). FRGS/1/2019/STG02/UM/02/6; the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119- M-001-027, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M-001-020, 107-2119-M-110-005, 108-2112-M-001-048, and 109-2124-M-001-005); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA; Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, and NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); the National Institute of Natural Sciences of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grants 2016YFA0400704 and 2016YFA0400702); the National Science Foundation (NSF; grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST-1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST-1207704, AST-1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP-1248097, AST-1310896, AST-1555365, AST-1615796, AST-1715061, AST-1716327, AST-1903847, and AST-2034306); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11573051, 11633006, 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312, 11933007, 11991052, and 11991053); a fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M671266); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC; including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF-2015H1A2A1033752 and 2015- R1D1A1A01056807; the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561 and Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721); the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the New Scientific Frontiers with Precision Radio Interferometry Fellowship awarded by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Technology of South Africa; the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) national infrastructure, for the provisioning of its facilities/observational support (OSO receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under grant 2017–00648) the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science); the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grants PGC2018-098915-B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, and PID2019-108995GB-C21); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017–0709); the Toray Science Foundation; the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant 2019AEP112); the US Department of Energy (USDOE) through the Los Alamos National Laboratory (operated by Triad National Security, LLC), for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the USDOE (Contract 89233218CNA000001); the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 730562 RadioNet; ALMA North America Development Fund; the Academia Sinica; Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the GenT Program (Generalitat Valenciana) Project CIDEGENT/2018/021. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant ACI-1548562, and CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. XSEDE Stampede2 resource at TACC was allocated through TG-AST170024 and TG-AST080026N. XSEDE JetStream resource at PTI and TACC was allocated through AST170028. The simulations were performed in part on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, and on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart. This research was enabled, in part, by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca), and Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca). We thank the staff at the participating observatories, correlation centers, and institutions for their enthusiastic support. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.01154.V. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), NSF, and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, together with National Research Council (Canada), MOST (Taiwan), the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)/NRAO, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The NRAO is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by AUI. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany), ESO, and the OSO (Sweden). The SMA is a joint project between the SAO and ASIAA and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. The JCMT is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of the NAOJ, ASIAA, and KASI, as well as the Ministry of Finance of China, CAS, and the National Key R&D Program (No. 2017YFA0402700) of China. Additional funding support for the JCMT is provided by the Science and Technologies Facility Council (UK) and participating universities in the UK and Canada. The LMT is a project operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrófisica, Óptica, y Electrónica (Mexico) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). The IRAM 30 m telescope in Pico Veleta, Spain is operated by IRAM and supported by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), MPG (Max-Planck Gesellschaft, Germany), and IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain). The SMT is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory, a part of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, with financial support of operations from the State of Arizona and financial support for instrumentation development from the NSF. The SPT is supported by the NSF through grant PLR-1248097. Partial support is also provided by the NSF Physics Frontier Center grant PHY-1125897 to the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Kavli Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant GBMF 947. The SPT hydrogen maser was provided on loan from the GLT, courtesy of ASIAA. The EHTC has received generous donations of FPGA chips from Xilinx Inc., under the Xilinx University Program. The EHTC has benefited from technology shared under an open-source license by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research. The EHT project is grateful to T4Science and Microsemi for their assistance with hydrogen masers. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System. We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the extended staff of the ALMA, both from the inception of the ALMA Phasing Project through the observational campaigns of 2017 and 2018. We would like to thank A. Deller and W. Brisken for the EHT-specific support with the use of DiFX. We acknowledge the significance that Maunakea, where the SMA and JCMT-EHT stations are located, has for the indigenous Hawaiian people.

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Published - Satapathy_2022_ApJ_925_13.pdf

Accepted Version - 2111.01317.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
113095
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20220125-723797779

Related works

Describes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.01317 (URL)

Funding

NSF
OISE-1743747
NASA
80NSSC20K0521
Black Hole Initiative
NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship
AST-1903847
John Templeton Foundation
60477
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF-3561
NSF
AST-1228509
NSF
DBI-0735191
NSF
DBI-1265383
NSF
DBI-1743442
Academy of Finland
274477
Academy of Finland
284495
Academy of Finland
312496
Academy of Finland
315721
Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID)
NCN19_058
Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT)
3190878
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
European ALMA Regional Centre
Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor de Astronomie (NOVA)
Radboud University
China Scholarship Council
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
U0004-246083
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
U0004-259839
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
F0003-272050
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
M0037-279006
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
F0003-281692
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
104497
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
275201
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
263356
Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair
Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
IN112417
Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
IN112820
European Research Council (ERC)
610058
Generalitat Valenciana
APOSTD/2018/177
Generalitat Valenciana
CIDEGENT/2018/021
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
PID2019-108995GB-C22
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics
Flatiron Institute
Princeton University
Columbia University
Simons Foundation
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP17J08829
Chinese Academy of Sciences
QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057
Chinese Academy of Sciences
QYZDJSSW-SYS008
Chinese Academy of Sciences
ZDBS-LY-SLH011
Leverhulme Trust
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
18KK0090
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP18K13594
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP18K03656
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP18H03721
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
18K03709
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
18H01245
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
25120007
Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant
FRGS/1/2019/STG02/UM/02/6
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
105-2112-M-001-025-MY3
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
106-2112-M-001-011
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
106-2119-M-001-027
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
107-2119-M-001-017
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
107-2119-M-001-020
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
107-2119-M-110-005
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
108-2112-M-001-048
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
109-2124-M-001-005
NASA
80NSSC20K1567
NASA
80NSSC20K0527
NASA
80NSSC20K0645
National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS)
National Key Research and Development Program of China
2016YFA0400704
National Key Research and Development Program of China
2016YFA0400702
NSF
AST-0096454
NSF
AST-0352953
NSF
AST-0521233
NSF
AST-0705062
NSF
AST-0905844
NSF
AST-0922984
NSF
AST-1126433
NSF
AST-1140030
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
DGE-1144085
NSF
AST-1207704
NSF
AST-1207730
NSF
AST-1207752
NSF
MRI-1228509
NSF
OPP-1248097
NSF
AST-1310896
NSF
AST-1555365
NSF
AST-1615796
NSF
AST-1715061
NSF
AST-1716327
NSF
AST-1903847
NSF
AST-2034306
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11573051
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11633006
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11650110427
National Natural Science Foundation of China
10625314
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11721303
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11725312
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11933007
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11991052
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11991053
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
2020M671266
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China
National Research Foundation of Korea
NRF-2015H1A2A1033752
National Research Foundation of Korea
2015- R1D1A1A01056807
National Research Foundation of Korea
NRF-2015H1D3A1066561
National Research Foundation of Korea
2019R1F1A1059721
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
639.043.513
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
SPI 78-409
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
National Research Foundation (South Africa)
Department of Science and Technology (South Africa)
Onsala Space Observatory (OSO)
Swedish Research Council
2017-00648
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (Canada)
Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
PGC2018-098915-B-C21
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
AYA2016-80889-P
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
PID2019-108995GB-C21
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIU)
Severo Ochoa
SEV-2017-0709
Toray Science Foundation
Junta de Andalucía
P18-FR-1769
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
2019AEP112
Department of Energy (DOE)
89233218CNA000001
European Research Council (ERC)
730562
ALMA North America Development Fund
Academia Sinica
NASA
DD7-18089X
NASA
TM6-17006X
Generalitat Valenciana
CIDEGENT/2018/021
NSF
ACI-1548562
NSF
DBI-0735191
NSF
DBI-1265383
NSF
DBI-1743442
NSF
TG-AST170024
NSF
TG-AST080026N
NSF
AST-170028
Compute Ontario
Calcul Quebec
Compute Canada
National Key Research and Development Program of China
2017YFA0402700
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Max Planck Society
Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN)
State of Arizona
NSF
PLR-1248097
NSF
PHY-1125897
Kavli Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF 947

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2022-01-25
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Updated
2022-01-25
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