Polarimetric Geometric Modeling for mm-VLBI Observations of Black Holes

Freek Roelofs*, Michael D. Johnson, Andrew Chael, Michael Janssen, Maciek Wielgus, Avery E. Broderick, Kazunori Akiyama, Antxon Alberdi, Walter Alef, Juan Carlos Algaba, Richard Anantua, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, Uwe Bach, Anne Kathrin Baczko, David Ball, Mislav Baloković, John Barrett, Michi Bauböck, Bradford A. BensonDan Bintley, Lindy Blackburn, Raymond Blundell, Katherine L. Bouman, Geoffrey C. Bower, Hope Boyce, Michael Bremer, Christiaan D. Brinkerink, Roger Brissenden, Silke Britzen, Dominique Broguiere, Thomas Bronzwaer, Sandra Bustamante, Do Young Byun, John E. Carlstrom, Chiara Ceccobello, Chi Kwan Chan, Dominic O. Chang, Koushik Chatterjee, Shami Chatterjee, Ming Tang Chen, Yongjun Chen, Xiaopeng Cheng, Ilje Cho, Pierre Christian, Nicholas S. Conroy, John E. Conway, James M. Cordes, Thomas M. Crawford, Geoffrey B. Crew, Alejandro Cruz-Osorio, Yuzhu Cui, Rohan Dahale, Jordy Davelaar, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jessica Dempsey, Gregory Desvignes, Jason Dexter, Vedant Dhruv, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Sean Dougal, Sergio A. Dzib, Ralph P. Eatough, Razieh Emami, Heino Falcke, Joseph Farah, Vincent L. Fish, Ed Fomalont, H. Alyson Ford, Marianna Foschi, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, William T. Freeman, Per Friberg, Christian M. Fromm, Antonio Fuentes, Peter Galison, Charles F. Gammie, Roberto García, Olivier Gentaz, Boris Georgiev, Ciriaco Goddi, Roman Gold, Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz, José L. Gómez, Minfeng Gu, Mark Gurwell, Kazuhiro Hada, Daryl Haggard, Kari Haworth, Michael H. Hecht, Ronald Hesper, Dirk Heumann, Luis C. Ho, Paul Ho, Mareki Honma, Chih Wei L. Huang, Lei Huang, David H. Hughes, Shiro Ikeda, C. M.Violette Impellizzeri, Makoto Inoue, Sara Issaoun, David J. James, Buell T. Jannuzi, Britton Jeter, Wu Jiang, Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales, Svetlana Jorstad, Abhishek V. Joshi, Taehyun Jung, Mansour Karami, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Tomohisa Kawashima, Garrett K. Keating, Mark Kettenis, Dong Jin Kim, Jae Young Kim, Jongsoo Kim, Junhan Kim, Motoki Kino, Jun Yi Koay, Prashant Kocherlakota, Yutaro Kofuji, Patrick M. Koch, Shoko Koyama, Carsten Kramer, Joana A. Kramer, Michael Kramer, Thomas P. Krichbaum, Cheng Yu Kuo, Noemi La Bella, Tod R. Lauer, Daeyoung Lee, Sang Sung Lee, Po Kin Leung, Aviad Levis, Zhiyuan Li, Rocco Lico, Greg Lindahl, Michael Lindqvist, Mikhail Lisakov, Jun Liu, Kuo Liu, Elisabetta Liuzzo, Wen Ping Lo, Andrei P. Lobanov, Laurent Loinard, Colin J. Lonsdale, Amy E. Lowitz, Ru Sen Lu, Nicholas R. MacDonald, Jirong Mao, Nicola Marchili, Sera Markoff, Daniel P. Marrone, Alan P. Marscher, Iván Martí-Vidal, Satoki Matsushita, Lynn D. Matthews, Lia Medeiros, Karl M. Menten, Daniel Michalik, Izumi Mizuno, Yosuke Mizuno, James M. Moran, Kotaro Moriyama, Monika Moscibrodzka, Wanga Mulaudzi, Cornelia Müller, Hendrik Müller, Alejandro Mus, Gibwa Musoke, Ioannis Myserlis, Andrew Nadolski, Hiroshi Nagai, Neil M. Nagar, Masanori Nakamura, Ramesh Narayan, Gopal Narayanan, Iniyan Natarajan, Antonios Nathanail, Santiago Navarro Fuentes, Joey Neilsen, Roberto Neri, Chunchong Ni, Aristeidis Noutsos, Michael A. Nowak, Junghwan Oh, Hiroki Okino, Héctor Olivares, Gisela N. Ortiz-León, Tomoaki Oyama, Feryal Özel, Daniel C.M. Palumbo, Georgios Filippos Paraschos, Jongho Park, Harriet Parsons, Nimesh Patel, Ue Li Pen, Dominic W. Pesce, Vincent Piétu, Richard Plambeck, Aleksandar PopStefanija, Oliver Porth, Felix M. Pötzl, Ben Prather, Jorge A. Preciado-López, Dimitrios Psaltis, Hung Yi Pu, Venkatessh Ramakrishnan, Ramprasad Rao, Mark G. Rawlings, Alexander W. Raymond, Luciano Rezzolla, Angelo Ricarte, Bart Ripperda, Alan Rogers, Cristina Romero-Cañizales, Eduardo Ros, Arash Roshanineshat, Helge Rottmann, Alan L. Roy, Ignacio Ruiz, Chet Ruszczyk, Kazi L.J. Rygl, Salvador Sánchez, David Sánchez-Argüelles, Miguel Sánchez-Portal, Mahito Sasada, Kaushik Satapathy, Tuomas Savolainen, F. Peter Schloerb, Jonathan Schonfeld, Karl Friedrich Schuster, Lijing Shao, Zhiqiang Shen, Des Small, Bong Won Sohn, Jason SooHoo, León David Sosapanta Salas, Kamal Souccar, He Sun, Fumie Tazaki, Alexandra J. Tetarenko, Paul Tiede, Remo P.J. Tilanus, Michael Titus, Pablo Torne, Teresa Toscano, Efthalia Traianou, Tyler Trent, Sascha Trippe, Matthew Turk, Ilse van Bemmel, Huib Jan van Langevelde, Daniel R. van Rossum, Jesse Vos, Jan Wagner, Derek Ward-Thompson, John Wardle, Jasmin E. Washington, Jonathan Weintroub, Robert Wharton, Kaj Wiik, Gunther Witzel, Michael F. Wondrak, George N. Wong, Qingwen Wu, Nitika Yadlapalli, Paul Yamaguchi, Aristomenis Yfantis, Doosoo Yoon, André Young, Ken Young, Ziri Younsi, Wei Yu, Feng Yuan, Ye Fei Yuan, J. Anton Zensus, Shuo Zhang, Guang Yao Zhao, Shan Shan Zhao

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a millimeter very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) array that has imaged the apparent shadows of the supermassive black holes M87* and Sagittarius A*. Polarimetric data from these observations contain a wealth of information on the black hole and accretion flow properties. In this work, we develop polarimetric geometric modeling methods for mm-VLBI data, focusing on approaches that fit data products with differing degrees of invariance to broad classes of calibration errors. We establish a fitting procedure using a polarimetric “m-ring” model to approximate the image structure near a black hole. By fitting this model to synthetic EHT data from general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic models, we show that the linear and circular polarization structure can be successfully approximated with relatively few model parameters. We then fit this model to EHT observations of M87* taken in 2017. In total intensity and linear polarization, the m-ring fits are consistent with previous results from imaging methods. In circular polarization, the m-ring fits indicate the presence of event-horizon-scale circular polarization structure, with a persistent dipolar asymmetry and orientation across several days. The same structure was recovered independently of observing band, used data products, and model assumptions. Despite this broad agreement, imaging methods do not produce similarly consistent results. Our circular polarization results, which imposed additional assumptions on the source structure, should thus be interpreted with some caution. Polarimetric geometric modeling provides a useful and powerful method to constrain the properties of horizon-scale polarized emission, particularly for sparse arrays like the EHT.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberL21
JournalAstrophysical Journal Letters
Volume957
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023 Nov 1
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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