Kavli Affiliate: Roger Blandford
| First 5 Authors: Richard Anantua, Angelo Ricarte, George Wong, Razieh Emami, Roger Blandford
| Summary:
Horizon-scale observations of the jetted active galactic nucleus M87 are
compared with simulations spanning a broad range of dissipation mechanisms and
plasma content in three-dimensional general relativistic flows around spinning
black holes. Observations of synchrotron radiation from radio to X-ray
frequencies can be compared with simulations by adding prescriptions specifying
the relativistic electron-plus-positron distribution function and associated
radiative transfer coefficients. A suite of time-varying simulations with
various spins and plasma magnetizations is chosen to represent distinct
possibilities for the M87 jet/accretion flow/black hole (JAB) system. We then
input turbulent heating and equipartition-based emission prescriptions (and
piecewise combinations thereof) in the time-dependent 3D simulations, in which
jet morphology, polarization and variation are "observed" and compared with
real observations so as to try to infer the rules that govern the polarized
emissivity. The models in this paper support a magnetically arrested disk (MAD)
with several possible spin/emission model combinations supplying the jet in
M87, whose inner jet and black hole shadow have been observed down to the
photon ring at 230 GHz by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). We also show that
some MAD cases that are dominated by intrinsic circular polarization have
near-linear V/I dependence on unpaired electron or positron content while SANE
polarization exhibits markedly greater positron-dependent Faraday effects —
future probes of the SANE/MAD dichotomy and plasma content with the EHT. This
is the second work in a series also applying the "observing" simulations
methodology to near-horizon regions of supermassive black holes in Sgr A* and
3C 279.
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