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A Face-on Accretion Disk Geometry Revealed by Millimeter-wave Periodicity in Sgr A$^*$

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2025-11-05 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We analyzed 77 epochs of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) archival data to investigate flux variability in Sagittarius A^* (Sgr A^*), the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center. Among these, we identified a rare but unusually clear and coherent ~52-minute sinusoidal modulation at 230 GHz, with a statistical significance exceeding 5{\sigma}. Modeling with a Doppler-boosted hotspot scenario yields an orbital radius of ~4 Schwarzschild radii and a disk inclination of 8^\circ (or 172^\circ), providing the first direct millimeter wavelength constraint on the inner accretion flow geometry. This nearly face-on inclination is in good agreement with previous constraints from GRAVITY and EHT observations. These findings provide robust, independent evidence that millimeter-wave periodicity can directly probe the innermost accretion flow geometry, offering a powerful complement to variability studies at infrared and X-ray wavelengths.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.02186,
  title  = {A Face-on Accretion Disk Geometry Revealed by Millimeter-wave Periodicity in Sgr A$^*$},
  author = {Kazuki Yanagisawa and Tomoharu Oka and Ryo Ariyama and Kazuki Yanagihara and Yuhei iwata and Mikiya M. Takahashi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.02186},
  year   = {2025}
}

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8 pages