Ring Asymmetry and Spin in M87*
Vadim Bernshteyn, Nicholas S. Conroy, Michi Bauböck, Paul Tiede, Abhishek V. Joshi, Ben S. Prather, Charles F. Gammie, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, :, Kazunori Akiyama, Ezequiel Albentosa-Ruíz, Antxon Alberdi, Walter Alef, Juan Carlos Algaba, Richard Anantua, Keiichi Asada, Rebecca Azulay, Anne-Kathrin Baczko, David Ball, Bidisha Bandyopadhyay, John Barrett, Bradford A. Benson, Dan Bintley, Lindy Blackburn, Raymond Blundell, Katherine L. Bouman, Geoffrey C. Bower, Michael Bremer, Roger Brissenden, Silke Britzen, Avery E. Broderick, Dominique Broguiere, Thomas Bronzwaer, Sandra Bustamante, Douglas F. Carlos, John E. Carlstrom, Andrew Chael, Chi-kwan Chan, Dominic O. Chang, Koushik Chatterjee, Ming-Tang Chen, Yongjun Chen, Xiaopeng Cheng, Paul Chichura, Ilje Cho, John E. Conway, Thomas M. Crawford, Geoffrey B. Crew, Alejandro Cruz-Osorio, Yuzhu Cui, Brandon Curd, Rohan Dahale, Jordy Davelaar, Mariafelicia De Laurentis, Roger Deane, Jason Dexter, Vedant Dhruv, Indu K. Dihingia, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Sergio A. Dzib, Razieh Emami, Heino Falcke, Joseph Farah, Vincent L. Fish, Edward Fomalont, H. Alyson Ford, Marianna Foschi, Raquel Fraga-Encinas, William T. Freeman, Per Friberg, Christian M. Fromm, Antonio Fuentes, Peter Galison, 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, 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, Adam C. Jones, Taehyun Jung, 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, Joana A. Kramer, Michael Kramer, Thomas P. Krichbaum, Cheng-Yu Kuo, Noemi La Bella, Deokhyeong Lee, Sang-Sung Lee, Aviad Levis, Shaoliang Li, 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, Amy E. Lowitz, Ru-Sen Lu, Nicholas R. MacDonald, 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, Hugo Messias, Izumi Mizuno, Yosuke Mizuno, Joshua Montgomery, Kotaro Moriyama, Monika Moscibrodzka, Wanga Mulaudzi, Cornelia Müller, Hendrik Müller, Alejandro Mus, Gibwa Musoke, Ioannis Myserlis, Hiroshi Nagai, Neil M. Nagar, Dhanya G. Nair, Masanori Nakamura, Gopal Narayanan, Iniyan Natarajan, Antonios Nathanail, Santiago Navarro Fuentes, Joey Neilsen, Chunchong Ni, Michael A. Nowak, Hiroki Okino, Héctor Raúl Olivares Sánchez, Feryal Özel, Daniel C. M. Palumbo, Georgios Filippos Paraschos, Jongho Park, Harriet Parsons, Nimesh Patel, Ue-Li Pen, Dominic W. Pesce, Vincent Piétu, Alexander Plavin, Aleksandar PopStefanija, Oliver Porth, Giacomo Principe, Dimitrios Psaltis, Hung-Yi Pu, Alexandra Rahlin, Venkatessh Ramakrishnan, Ramprasad Rao, Mark G. Rawlings, Luciano Rezzolla, Angelo Ricarte, Luca Ricci, Bart Ripperda, Jan Röder, Freek Roelofs, Cristina Romero-Cañizales, Eduardo Ros, Arash Roshanineshat, Helge Rottmann, Alan L. Roy, Ignacio Ruiz, Chet Ruszczyk, Kazi L. J. Rygl, León D. S. Salas, Salvador Sánchez, David Sánchez-Argüelles, Miguel Sánchez-Portal, Mahito Sasada, Kaushik Satapathy, Saurabh, Tuomas Savolainen, Karl-Friedrich Schuster, Zhiqiang Shen, Sasikumar Silpa, Randall Smith, Bong Won Sohn, Jason SooHoo, Kamal Souccar, Joshua S. Stanway, He Sun, Alexandra J. Tetarenko, Remo P. J. Tilanus, Michael Titus, Kenji Toma, Pablo Torne, Teresa Toscano, Efthalia Traianou, Sascha Trippe, Matthew Turk, Ilse van Bemmel, Huib Jan van Langevelde, Daniel R. van Rossum, Sebastiano D. von Fellenberg, Jesse Vos, Jan Wagner, Derek Ward-Thompson, John Wardle, Jasmin E. Washington, Jonathan Weintroub, Maciek Wielgus, Kaj Wiik, Michael F. Wondrak, George N. Wong, Jompoj Wongphexhauxsorn, Qingwen Wu, Paul Yamaguchi, Aristomenis Yfantis, Doosoo Yoon, André Young, Ziri Younsi, Wei Yu, Feng Yuan, Ye-Fei Yuan, Ai-Ling Zeng, J. Anton Zensus, Shuo Zhang, Guang-Yao Zhao
Abstract
Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) images of the supermassive black hole M87* depict an asymmetric ring of emission. General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) models of M87* and its accretion disk predict that the amplitude and location of the ring's peak brightness asymmetry should fluctuate due to turbulence in the source plasma. We compare the observed distribution of brightness asymmetry amplitudes to the simulated distribution in GRMHD models, across varying black hole spin $a_{*}$. We show that, for strongly magnetized (MAD) models, three epochs of EHT data marginally disfavor $|a_{*}| \lesssim 0.2$. This is consistent with the Blandford-Znajek model for M87's jet, which predicts that M87* should have nonzero spin. We show quantitatively how future observations could improve spin constraints, and discuss how improved spin constraints could distinguish between differing jet-launching mechanisms and black hole growth scenarios.