TY - JOUR
T1 - Testing General Relativity with Accretion-Flow Imaging of Sgr A∗
AU - Johannsen, Tim
AU - Wang, Carlos
AU - Broderick, Avery E.
AU - Doeleman, Sheperd S.
AU - Fish, Vincent L.
AU - Loeb, Abraham
AU - Psaltis, Dimitrios
N1 - Funding Information:
T. J. was supported by a CITA National Fellowship at the University of Waterloo and is supported in part by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. A. E. B. receives financial support from Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a Discovery Grant. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The Event Horizon Telescope is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant No. GBMF-3561).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Physical Society.
PY - 2016/8/24
Y1 - 2016/8/24
N2 - The Event Horizon Telescope is a global, very long baseline interferometer capable of probing potential deviations from the Kerr metric, which is believed to provide the unique description of astrophysical black holes. Here, we report an updated constraint on the quadrupolar deviation of Sagittarius A∗ within the context of a radiatively inefficient accretion flow model in a quasi-Kerr background. We also simulate near-future constraints obtainable by the forthcoming eight-station array and show that in this model already a one-day observation can measure the spin magnitude to within 0.005, the inclination to within 0.09°, the position angle to within 0.04°, and the quadrupolar deviation to within 0.005 at 3σ confidence. Thus, we are entering an era of high-precision strong gravity measurements.
AB - The Event Horizon Telescope is a global, very long baseline interferometer capable of probing potential deviations from the Kerr metric, which is believed to provide the unique description of astrophysical black holes. Here, we report an updated constraint on the quadrupolar deviation of Sagittarius A∗ within the context of a radiatively inefficient accretion flow model in a quasi-Kerr background. We also simulate near-future constraints obtainable by the forthcoming eight-station array and show that in this model already a one-day observation can measure the spin magnitude to within 0.005, the inclination to within 0.09°, the position angle to within 0.04°, and the quadrupolar deviation to within 0.005 at 3σ confidence. Thus, we are entering an era of high-precision strong gravity measurements.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.091101
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.091101
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84988490307
VL - 117
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
SN - 0031-9007
IS - 9
M1 - 091101
ER -