Second Scale Submillimeter Variability of Sagittarius A* during flaring activity of 2019: On the Origin of Bright Near Infrared Flares

TL;DR

This study presents high-resolution ALMA observations of Sagittarius A*'s submillimeter variability during 2019's intense flaring activity, revealing insights into the origin of bright near-infrared flares and the underlying physical processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel light curve extraction method enabling detailed variability analysis and provides new insights into the timescale and origin of flares in Sgr A*.

Findings

High time-resolution, high S/N submm light curves of Sgr A* during flaring

Improved structure function analysis over previous studies

Evidence supporting magnetic reconnection as the cause of bright NIR flares

Abstract

In 2019, Sgr A* - the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center - underwent unprecedented flaring activity in the near infrared (NIR), brightening by up to a factor of 100 compared to quiescent values. Here we report ALMA observations of Sgr A*'s continuum variability at 1.3 mm (230 GHz) - a tracer of the accretion rate - conducted one month after the brightest detected NIR flare and in the middle of the flaring activity of 2019. We develop an innovative light curve extraction technique which (together with ALMA's excellent sensitivity) allows us to obtain the light curves which are simultaneously of high time resolution (2 seconds) and high signal-to-noise ratio (~ 500). We construct an accurate intrinsic structure function of the Sgr A* submm variability, improving on previous studies by about two orders of magnitude in timescale and one order of magnitude in sensitivity. We compare the June 2019 variability behavior with that of 2001-2017, and suggest that the most likely cause of the bright NIR flares is magnetic reconnection.