First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole

Kazunori Akiyama , Antxon Alberdi , Walter Alef , Juan Carlos Algaba , Richard Anantua , Keiichi Asada , Rebecca Azulay , Uwe Bach , Anne-Kathrin Baczko , David Ball , Mislav Baloković , John Barrett , Michi Bauböck , Bradford A. Benson , Dan Bintley , Lindy Blackburn , Raymond Blundell , Katherine L. Bouman , Geoffrey C. Bower , Hope Boyce , Michael Bremer , Christiaan D. Brinkerink , Roger Brissenden , Silke Britzen , Avery E. Broderick , Dominique Broguiere , Thomas Bronzwaer , Sandra Bustamante , Do-Young Byun , John E. Carlstrom , Chiara Ceccobello , Andrew Chael , Chi-Kwan Chan , Koushik Chatterjee , Shami Chatterjee , Ming-Tang Chen , Yongjun Chen , Xiaopeng Cheng , Ilje Cho , Pierre Christian , Nicholas S. Conroy , 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) , Jason Dexter , Vedant Dhruv , Sheperd S. Doeleman , Sean Dougal , Sergio A. Dzib , Ralph P. Eatough , Razieh Emami , Heino Falcke , Joseph Farah , Vincent L. Fish , Ed Fomalont , H. Alyson Ford , Raquel Fraga-Encinas , William T. Freeman , Per Friberg , Christian M. Fromm , Antonio Fuentes , Peter Galison , Charles F. Gammie , Roberto García , Olivier Gentaz , Boris Georgiev , Ciriaco Goddi , Roman Gold , Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz , José L. Gómez , Minfeng Gu , Mark Gurwell , Kazuhiro Hada , Daryl Haggard , Kari Haworth , Michael H. Hecht , Ronald Hesper , Dirk Heumann , Luis C. Ho , Paul Ho , Mareki Honma , Chih-Wei L. Huang , Lei Huang , David H. Hughes , Shiro Ikeda , C. M. Violette Impellizzeri , Makoto Inoue , Sara Issaoun , David J. James , Buell T. Jannuzi , Michael Janssen , Britton Jeter , Wu Jiang , Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales , Michael D. Johnson , Svetlana Jorstad , Abhishek V. Joshi , 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 , Prashant Kocherlakota , Yutaro Kofuji , Patrick M. Koch , Shoko Koyama , Carsten Kramer , Michael Kramer , Thomas P. Krichbaum , Cheng-Yu Kuo , Noemi La Bella , Tod R. Lauer , Daeyoung Lee , Sang-Sung Lee , Po Kin Leung , Aviad Levis , Zhiyuan Li , Rocco Lico , Greg Lindahl , Michael Lindqvist , Mikhail Lisakov , Jun Liu , Kuo Liu , Elisabetta Liuzzo , Wen-Ping Lo , Andrei P. Lobanov , Laurent Loinard , Colin J. Lonsdale , Ru-Sen Lu , Jirong Mao , Nicola Marchili , Sera Markoff , Daniel P. Marrone , Alan P. Marscher , Iván Martí-Vidal , Satoki Matsushita , Lynn D. Matthews , Lia Medeiros , Karl M. Menten , Daniel Michalik , Izumi Mizuno , Yosuke Mizuno , James M. Moran , Kotaro Moriyama , Monika Moscibrodzka , Cornelia Müller , Alejandro Mus , Gibwa Musoke , Ioannis Myserlis , Andrew Nadolski , Hiroshi Nagai , Neil M. Nagar , Masanori Nakamura , Ramesh Narayan , Gopal Narayanan , Iniyan Natarajan , Antonios Nathanail , Santiago Navarro Fuentes , Joey Neilsen , Roberto Neri , Chunchong Ni , Aristeidis Noutsos , Michael A. Nowak , Junghwan Oh , Hiroki Okino , Héctor Olivares , Gisela N. Ortiz-León , Tomoaki Oyama , Feryal Özel , Daniel C. M. Palumbo , Georgios Filippos Paraschos , Jongho Park , Harriet Parsons , Nimesh Patel , Ue-Li Pen , Dominic W. Pesce , 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 , Angelo Ricarte , Bart Ripperda , Freek Roelofs , Alan Rogers , Eduardo Ros , Cristina Romero-Cañizales , Arash Roshanineshat , Helge Rottmann , Alan L. Roy , Ignacio Ruiz , Chet Ruszczyk , Kazi L. J. Rygl , Salvador Sánchez , David Sánchez-Argüelles , Miguel Sánchez-Portal , Mahito Sasada , Kaushik Satapathy , Tuomas Savolainen , F. Peter Schloerb , Jonathan Schonfeld , Karl-Friedrich Schuster , Lijing Shao , Zhiqiang Shen , Des Small , Bong Won Sohn , Jason Soohoo , Kamal Souccar , He Sun , Fumie Tazaki , Alexandra J. Tetarenko , Paul Tiede , Remo P. J. Tilanus , Michael Titus , Pablo Torne , Efthalia Traianou , Tyler Trent , Sascha Trippe , Matthew Turk , Ilse van Bemmel , Huib Jan van Langevelde , Daniel R. van Rossum , Jesse Vos , Jan Wagner , Derek Ward-Thompson , John Wardle , Jonathan Weintroub , Norbert Wex , Robert Wharton , Maciek Wielgus , Kaj Wiik , Gunther Witzel , Michael F. Wondrak , George N. Wong , Qingwen Wu , Paul Yamaguchi , Doosoo Yoon , André Young , Ken Young , Ziri Younsi , Feng Yuan , Ye-Fei Yuan , J. Anton Zensus , Shuo Zhang , Guang-Yao Zhao , Shan-Shan Zhao , Tin Lok Chan , Richard Qiu , Sean Ressler , Chris White

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

In this paper we provide a first physical interpretation for the Event Horizon Telescope's (EHT) 2017 observations of Sgr A*. Our main approach is to compare resolved EHT data at 230 GHz and unresolved non-EHT observations from radio to X-ray wavelengths to predictions from a library of models based on time-dependent general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations, including aligned, tilted, and stellar-wind-fed simulations; radiative transfer is performed assuming both thermal and nonthermal electron distribution functions. We test the models against 11 constraints drawn from EHT 230 GHz data and observations at 86 GHz, 2.2 μm, and in the X-ray. All models fail at least one constraint. Light-curve variability provides a particularly severe constraint, failing nearly all strongly magnetized (magnetically arrested disk (MAD)) models and a large fraction of weakly magnetized models. A number of models fail only the variability constraints. We identify a promising cluster of these models, which are MAD and have inclination i ≤ 30°. They have accretion rate (5.2-9.5) × 10^-9 M _⊙ yr^-1, bolometric luminosity (6.8-9.2) × 10³⁵ erg s^-1, and outflow power (1.3-4.8) × 10³⁸ erg s^-1. We also find that all models with i ≥ 70° fail at least two constraints, as do all models with equal ion and electron temperature; exploratory, nonthermal model sets tend to have higher 2.2 μm flux density; and the population of cold electrons is limited by X-ray constraints due to the risk of bremsstrahlung overproduction. Finally, we discuss physical and numerical limitations of the models, highlighting the possible importance of kinetic effects and duration of the simulations.

Keywords: Black hole physics; Galactic center; 159; 565

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

Kazunori Akiyama, Antxon Alberdi, Walter Alef, Juan Carlos Algaba, Richard Anantua, et al.. First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Testing Astrophysical Models of the Galactic Center Black Hole. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2022, 930, ⟨10.3847/2041-8213/ac6672⟩. ⟨insu-03713313⟩