# Black Hole Spin Signature in the Black Hole Shadow of M87 in the Flaring State

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of synchrotron self-absorption on the black hole shadow of M87 during flaring states, revealing a dark-crescent feature as a signature of high black hole spin detectable by future EHT observations.

## Contribution

It introduces the concept of a dark-crescent structure as a new signature of high black hole spin in shadow images considering SSA effects, and demonstrates its detectability with upcoming EHT capabilities.

## Key findings

- Dark crescent size correlates with black hole spin, reaching up to 2 gravitational radii at 99.8% spin.
- SSA-thick region causes positional offsets in the shadow image, especially in high-spin cases.
- Future EHT observations can detect the dark crescent feature in flaring states.

## Abstract

Imaging the immediate vicinity of supermassive black holes (SMBH) and extracting a BH-spin signature is one of the grand challenges in astrophysics. M87 is known as one of the best targets for imaging the BH shadow and it can be partially thick against synchrotron self-absorption (SSA), particularly in a flaring state with high mass accretion rate. However, little is known about influences of the SSA-thick region on BH shadow images. Here we investigate BH shadow images of M87 at 230 GHz properly taking into account the SSA-thick region. When the BH has a high spin value, the corresponding BH shadow image shows the positional offset between the center of the photon ring and that of the SSA-thick ring at the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) due to the frame-dragging effect in the Kerr spacetime. As a result, we find that a dark-crescent structure is generally produced between the photon ring and the SSA-thick ISCO ring in the BH shadow image. The scale size of the dark-crescent increase with BH spin: its width reaches up to $\sim 2$ gravitational radius when the BH spin is 99.8% of its maximum value. The dark crescent is regarded as a new signature of a highly spinning BH. This feature is expected to appear in flaring states with relatively high mass accretion rate rather than the quiescent states. We have simulated the image reconstruction of our theoretical image by assuming the current and future Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) array, and have found that the future EHT including space-very long baseline interferometry in 2020s can detect the dark crescent.