Selective Dynamical Imaging of Interferometric Data

Joseph Farah , Peter Galison , Kazunori Akiyama , Katherine L. Bouman , Geoffrey C. Bower , Andrew Chael , Antonio Fuentes , José L. Gómez , Mareki Honma , Michael D. Johnson , Yutaro Kofuji , Daniel P. Marrone , Kotaro Moriyama , Ramesh Narayan , Dominic W. Pesce , Paul Tiede , Maciek Wielgus , Guang-Yao Zhao , Antxon Alberdi , Walter Alef , Juan Carlos Algaba , Richard Anantua , Keiichi Asada , Rebecca Azulay , Anne-Kathrin Baczko , David Ball , Mislav Baloković , John Barrett , Bradford A. Benson , Dan Bintley , Lindy Blackburn , Raymond Blundell , Wilfred Boland , Hope Boyce , Michael Bremer , Christiaan D. Brinkerink , Roger Brissenden , Silke Britzen , Avery E. Broderick , Dominique Broguiere , Thomas Bronzwaer , Sandra Bustamente , Do-Young Byun , John E. Carlstrom , Chi-Kwan Chan , Koushik Chatterjee , Shami Chatterjee , Ming-Tang Chen , Yongjun Chen , Ilje Cho , Pierre Christian , John E. Conway , James M. Cordes , Thomas M. Crawford , Geoffrey B. Crew , Alejandro Cruz-Osorio , Yuzhu Cui , Jordy Davelaar , Mariafelicia de Laurentis , Roger Deane , Jessica Dempsey , Gregory Desvignes (1) , Sheperd S. Doeleman , Ralph P. Eatough , Heino Falcke , Vincent L. Fish , Ed Fomalont , H. Alyson Ford , Raquel Fraga-Encinas , Per Friberg , Christian M. Fromm , Charles F. Gammie , Roberto Garc'A , Olivier Gentaz , Ciriaco Goddi , Roman Gold , Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz , Minfeng Gu , Mark Gurwell , Kazuhiro Hada , Daryl Haggard , Michael H. Hecht , Ronald Hesper , Luis C. Ho , Paul Ho , Chih-Wei L. Huang , Lei Huang , David H. Hughes , Shiro Ikeda , Makoto Inoue , Sara Issaoun , David J. James , Buell T. Jannuzi , Michael Janssen , Britton Jeter , Wu Jiang , Alejandra Jimenez-Rosales , Svetlana Jorstad , Taehyun Jung , Mansour Karami , Ramesh Karuppusamy , Tomohisa Kawashima , Garrett K. Keating , Mark Kettenis , Dong-Jin Kim , Jae-Young Kim , Jongsoo Kim , Junhan Kim , Motoki Kino , Jun Yi Koay , Patrick M. Koch , Shoko Koyama , Carsten Kramer , Michael Kramer , Thomas P. Krichbaum , Cheng-Yu Kuo , Tod R. Lauer , Sang-Sung Lee , Aviad Levis , Yan-Rong Li , Zhiyuan Li , Rocco Lico , Greg Lindahl , Michael Lindqvist , Jun Liu , Kuo Liu , Elisabetta Liuzzo , Wen-Ping Lo , Andrei P. Lobanov , Laurent Loinard , Colin Lonsdale , Ru-Sen Lu , Nicholas R. Macdonald , Jirong Mao , Nicola Marchili , Sera Markoff , Alan P. Marscher , Iván Martí-Vidal , Satoki Matsushita , Lynn D. Matthews , Lia Medeiros , Karl M. Menten , Izumi Mizuno , Yosuke Mizuno , James M. Moran , Monika Moscibrodzka , Cornelia Müller , Alejandro Mus Mejas , Gibwa Musoke , Hiroshi Nagai , Neil M. Nagar , Masanori Nakamura , Gopal Narayanan , Iniyan Natarajan , Antonios Nathanail , Joey Neilsen , Roberto Neri , Chunchong Ni , Aristeidis Noutsos , Michael A. Nowak , Hiroki Okino , Héctor Olivares , Gisela N. Ortiz-León , Tomoaki Oyama , Feryal Zel , Daniel C. M. Palumbo , Jongho Park , Nimesh Patel , Ue-Li Pen , Vincent Piétu , Richard Plambeck , Aleksandar Popstefanija , Oliver Porth , Felix M. Pötzl , Ben Prather , Jorge A. Preciado-López , Dimitrios Psaltis , Hung-Yi Pu , Venkatessh Ramakrishnan , Ramprasad Rao , Mark G. Rawlings , Alexander W. Raymond , Luciano Rezzolla , Bart Ripperda , Freek Roelofs , Alan Rogers , Eduardo Ros , Mel Rose , Arash Roshanineshat , Helge Rottmann , Alan L. Roy , Chet Ruszczyk , Kazi L. J. Rygl , Salvador Sánchez , David Sánchez-Arguelles , Mahito Sasada , Tuomas Savolainen , F. Peter Schloerb , Karl-Friedrich Schuster , Lijing Shao , Zhiqiang Shen , Des Small , Bong Won Sohn , Jason Soohoo , He Sun , Fumie Tazaki , Alexandra J. Tetarenko , Remo P. J. Tilanus , Michael Titus , Kenji Toma , Pablo Torne , Efthalia Traianou , Tyler Trent , Sascha Trippe , Ilse van Bemmel , Huib Jan van Langevelde , Daniel R. van Rossum , Jan Wagner , Derek Ward-Thompson , John Wardle , Jonathan Weintroub , Norbert Wex , Robert Wharton , Kaj Wiik , George N. Wong , Qingwen Wu , Doosoo Yoon , André Young , Ken Young , Ziri Younsi , Feng Yuan , Ye-Fei Yuan , J. Anton Zensus , Shan-Shan Zhao

1 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique = Laboratory of Space Studies and Instrumentation in Astrophysics

Recent developments in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) have made it possible for the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) to resolve the innermost accretion flows of the largest supermassive black holes on the sky. The sparse nature of the EHT's (u, v)-coverage presents a challenge when attempting to resolve highly time-variable sources. We demonstrate that the changing (u, v)-coverage of the EHT can contain regions of time over the course of a single observation that facilitate dynamical imaging. These optimal time regions typically have projected baseline distributions that are approximately angularly isotropic and radially homogeneous. We derive a metric of coverage quality based on baseline isotropy and density that is capable of ranking array configurations by their ability to produce accurate dynamical reconstructions. We compare this metric to existing metrics in the literature and investigate their utility by performing dynamical reconstructions on synthetic data from simulated EHT observations of sources with simple orbital variability. We then use these results to make recommendations for imaging the 2017 EHT Sgr A* data set.

Keywords: Astrophysical black holes; Very long baseline interferometry; Aperture synthesis; Interferometry

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

Joseph Farah, Peter Galison, Kazunori Akiyama, Katherine L. Bouman, Geoffrey C. Bower, et al.. Selective Dynamical Imaging of Interferometric Data. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2022, 930, ⟨10.3847/2041-8213/ac6615⟩. ⟨insu-03713310⟩