Imaging the Supermassive Black Hole Shadow and Jet Base of M87 with the Event Horizon Telescope

TL;DR

The paper demonstrates that the Event Horizon Telescope can image the black hole shadow and jet base of M87, confirming the feasibility of horizon-scale imaging and real-time structural monitoring of the black hole environment.

Contribution

It provides realistic VLBI simulations showing the EHT's capability to image the black hole shadow and jet structure of M87 at multiple frequencies, including the effects of array configurations.

Findings

The black hole shadow of M87 is detectable at 230 and 345 GHz.

The EHT can resolve features within a few Schwarzschild radii.

Imaging methods from optical interferometry are effective for EHT data.

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a project to assemble a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) network of mm wavelength dishes that can resolve strong field General Relativistic signatures near a supermassive black hole. As planned, the EHT will include enough dishes to enable imaging of the predicted black hole "shadow", a feature caused by severe light bending at the black hole boundary. The center of M87, a giant elliptical galaxy, presents one of the most interesting EHT targets as it exhibits a relativistic jet, offering the additional possibility of studying jet genesis on Schwarzschild radius scales. Fully relativistic models of the M87 jet that fit all existing observational constraints now allow horizon-scale images to be generated. We perform realistic VLBI simulations of M87 model images to examine detectability of the black shadow with the EHT, focusing on a sequence of model images with a changing jet mass load radius. When the jet is launched close to the black hole, the shadow is clearly visible both at 230 and 345 GHz. The EHT array with a resolution of 20-30$\mu$as resolution ($\sim$2-4 Schwarzschild radii) is able to image this feature independent of any theoretical models and we show that imaging methods used to process data from optical interferometers are applicable and effective for EHT data sets. We demonstrate that the EHT is also capable of tracing real-time structural changes on a few Schwarzschild radii scales, such as those implicated by VHE flaring activity of M87. While inclusion of ALMA in the EHT is critical for shadow imaging, generally the array is robust against loss of a station.