Images of the radiatively inefficient accretion flow surrounding a Kerr black hole: application in Sgr A*

TL;DR

This paper models the images of radiatively inefficient accretion flows around Kerr black holes, analyzing how spin, inclination, and wavelength affect observable features, aiding in black hole parameter estimation.

Contribution

It provides detailed general relativistic simulations of accretion flow images around Kerr black holes with variable spins and inclinations, including observational wavelength effects.

Findings

Black hole shadow size decreases with increasing spin.

Image size and brightness depend on inclination angle and wavelength.

High inclination or spin suggests a highly inclined disk or fast rotation for Sgr A*.

Abstract

In fully general relativity, we calculate the images of the radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF) surrounding a Kerr black hole with arbitrary spins, inclination angles, and observational wavelengths. For the same initial conditions, such as the fixed accretion rate, it is found that the intrinsic size and radiation intensity of the images become larger, but the images become more compact in the inner region, while the size of the black hole shadow decreases with the increase of the black hole spin. With the increase of the inclination angles, the shapes of the black hole shadows change and become smaller, even disappear at all due to the obscuration by the thick disks. For median inclination angles, the radial velocity observed at infinity is larger because of both the rotation and radial motion of the fluid in the disk, which results in the luminous part of the images is much brighter. For larger inclination angles, such as the disk is edge on, the emission becomes dimmer at longer observational wavelengths (such as at 7.0mm and 3.5mm wavelengths), or brighter at shorter observational wavelengths (such as at 1.3 mm wavelength) than that of the face on case, except for the high spin and high inclination images. These complex behaviors are due to the combination of the Lorentz boosting effect and the radiative absorption in the disk. We hope our results are helpful to determine the spin parameter of the black hole in low luminosity sources, such as the Galactic center. A primary analysis by comparison with the observed sizes of Sgr A* at millimeters strongly suggests that the disk around the central black hole at Sgr A* is highly inclined or the central black hole is rotating fast.