The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole in M87: EHT observations and theoretical modeling
speaker: Yosuke Mizuno
Abstract:
The Event Horizon Telescope has mapped the central compact radio source of the elliptical galaxy M87 at 1.3 mm with unprecedented angular resolution. These images show a prominent ring with a diameter of ~40 micro-arcsecond, consistent with the size and shape of the lensed photon orbit encircling the “shadow” of a supermassive black hole. In this talk, I would like to present recent progress of observation of EHT results of M87 and theoretical modeling and interpretation. We construct a large library of models based on general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations and synthetic images produced by general relativistic ray tracing. We compare the observed visibilities with this library and confirm that the asymmetric ring is consistent with earlier predictions of strong gravitational lensing of synchrotron emission from a hot plasma orbiting near the black hole event horizon. I also briefly discuss about new results of polarimetric images of M87 and their theoretical interpretation.