Decomposing the Internal Faraday Rotation of Black Hole Accretion Flows

TL;DR

This paper investigates how internal Faraday rotation in black hole accretion flows affects observed polarization, revealing complex spatial and temporal variability that impacts interpretation of EHT data.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the internal Faraday rotation effects using GRMHD simulations, highlighting variability, sign-flips, and the limitations of unresolved RM as an accretion rate indicator.

Findings

RM varies significantly across the event horizon scale images.

Internal RM can cause bandwidth depolarization within EHT bandwidths.

Emission from different regions shows vastly different Faraday rotation levels.

Abstract

Faraday rotation has been seen at millimeter wavelengths in several low luminosity active galactic nuclei, including Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) targets M87* and Sgr A*. The observed rotation measure (RM) probes the density, magnetic field, and temperature of material integrated along the line of sight. To better understand how accretion disc conditions are reflected in the RM, we perform polarized radiative transfer calculations using a set of general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations appropriate for M87*. We find that in spatially resolved millimetre wavelength images on event horizon scales, the RM can vary by orders of magnitude and even flip sign. The observational consequences of this spatial structure include significant time-variability, sign-flips, and non-$\lambda^2$ evolution of the polarization plane. For some models, we find that internal rotation measure can cause significant bandwidth depolarization even across the relatively narrow fractional bandwidths observed by the EHT. We decompose the linearly polarized emission in these models based on their RM and find that emission in front of the mid-plane can exhibit orders of magnitude less Faraday rotation than emission originating from behind the mid-plane or within the photon ring. We confirm that the spatially unresolved (i.e., image integrated) RM is a poor predictor of the accretion rate, with substantial scatter stemming from time variability and inclination effects. Models can be constrained with repeated observations to characterise time variability and the degree of non-$\lambda^2$ evolution of the polarization plane.