The Influence of Gas Dynamics on Measuring the Properties of the Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way with Stellar Orbits and Pulsars

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gas dynamics affect the ability to measure the black hole's properties in the Milky Way's center, concluding that hydrodynamic drag does not hinder future high-resolution observations of stellar and pulsar orbits.

Contribution

It models plasma density and temperature near the black hole to assess the impact of hydrodynamic drag on measuring black hole spin and quadrupole moment.

Findings

Hydrodynamic drag does not prevent measurements of black hole properties.

Models of plasma conditions support the feasibility of future observations.

Relativistic effects remain observable despite plasma interactions.

Abstract

Observations of stars and pulsars orbiting the black hole in the center of the Milky Way offer the potential of measuring not only the mass of the black hole but also its spin and quadrupole moment, thereby providing observational verification of the no-hair theorem. The relativistic effects that will allow us to measure these higher moments of the gravitational field, however, are very small and may be masked by drag forces that stars and pulsars experience orbiting within the hot, tenuous plasma that surrounds the black hole. The properties of this plasma at large distances from the central object have been measured using observations of the extended X-ray emission that surrounds the point source. At distances comparable to the black-hole event horizon, the properties of the accretion flow have been constrained using observations of its long-wavelength emission and polarization, as well as of the size of the emitting region at 1.3 mm. I use models of the plasma density and temperature at various distances from the black hole to investigate the effect of hydrodynamic drag forces on future measurements of the higher moments of its gravitational field. I find that hydrodynamic drag does not preclude measurements of the black hole spin and quadrupole moment using high-resolution observations of stars and pulsars that orbit within a few thousand gravitational radii from its horizon.