TY - JOUR
T1 - Ring Asymmetry and Spin in M87*
AU - The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
AU - Bernshteyn, Vadim
AU - Conroy, Nicholas S.
AU - Bauböck, Michi
AU - Tiede, Paul
AU - Joshi, Abhishek V.
AU - Prather, Ben S.
AU - Gammie, Charles F.
AU - Zhang, Shuo
AU - Akiyama, Kazunori
AU - Albentosa-Ruíz, Ezequiel
AU - Alberdi, Antxon
AU - Alef, Walter
AU - Algaba, Juan Carlos
AU - Anantua, Richard
AU - Asada, Keiichi
AU - Azulay, Rebecca
AU - Baczko, Anne Kathrin
AU - Ball, David
AU - Bandyopadhyay, Bidisha
AU - Barrett, John
AU - Benson, Bradford A.
AU - Bintley, Dan
AU - Blackburn, Lindy
AU - Blundell, Raymond
AU - Bouman, Katherine L.
AU - Bower, Geoffrey C.
AU - Bremer, Michael
AU - Brissenden, Roger
AU - Britzen, Silke
AU - Broderick, Avery E.
AU - Broguiere, Dominique
AU - Bronzwaer, Thomas
AU - Bustamante, Sandra
AU - Carlos, Douglas F.
AU - Carlstrom, John E.
AU - Chael, Andrew
AU - Chan, Chi Kwan
AU - Chang, Dominic O.
AU - Chatterjee, Koushik
AU - Chen, Ming Tang
AU - Chen, Yongjun
AU - Cheng, Xiaopeng
AU - Chichura, Paul
AU - Cho, Ilje
AU - Conway, John E.
AU - Crawford, Thomas M.
AU - Crew, Geoffrey B.
AU - Cruz-Osorio, Alejandro
AU - Cui, Yuzhu
AU - Pu, Hung Yi
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2026/4/1
Y1 - 2026/4/1
N2 - Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images of the supermassive black hole M87* depict an asymmetric ring of emission. General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) models of M87* and its accretion disk predict that the amplitude and location of the ring’s peak brightness asymmetry should fluctuate due to turbulence in the source plasma. We compare the observed distribution of brightness asymmetry amplitudes to the simulated distribution in GRMHD models, across varying black hole spin a*. We show that, for strongly magnetized (MAD) models, three epochs of EHT data marginally disfavor ∣a*∣ ≲ 0.2. This is consistent with the Blandford-Znajek model for M87’s jet, which predicts that M87* should have nonzero spin. We show quantitatively how future observations could improve spin constraints and discuss how improved spin constraints could distinguish between differing jet-launching mechanisms and black hole growth scenarios.
AB - Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images of the supermassive black hole M87* depict an asymmetric ring of emission. General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) models of M87* and its accretion disk predict that the amplitude and location of the ring’s peak brightness asymmetry should fluctuate due to turbulence in the source plasma. We compare the observed distribution of brightness asymmetry amplitudes to the simulated distribution in GRMHD models, across varying black hole spin a*. We show that, for strongly magnetized (MAD) models, three epochs of EHT data marginally disfavor ∣a*∣ ≲ 0.2. This is consistent with the Blandford-Znajek model for M87’s jet, which predicts that M87* should have nonzero spin. We show quantitatively how future observations could improve spin constraints and discuss how improved spin constraints could distinguish between differing jet-launching mechanisms and black hole growth scenarios.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105034227406
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105034227406#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ae34af
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ae34af
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105034227406
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 1000
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 231
ER -