English

Relative Astrometry of Compact Flaring Structures in Sgr A* with Polarimetric VLBI

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2015-06-22 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

We demonstrate that polarimetric interferometry can be used to extract precise spatial information about compact polarized flares of Sgr A*. We show that, for a faint dynamical component, a single interferometric baseline suffices to determine both its polarization and projected displacement from the quiescent intensity centroid. A second baseline enables two-dimensional reconstruction of the displacement, and additional baselines can self-calibrate using the flare, enhancing synthesis imaging of the quiescent emission. We apply this technique to simulated 1.3-mm wavelength observations of a "hot spot" embedded in a radiatively inefficient accretion disk around Sgr A*. Our results indicate that, even with current sensitivities, polarimetric interferometry with the Event Horizon Telescope can achieve ~5 microarcsecond relative astrometry of compact flaring structures near Sgr A* on timescales of minutes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1408.6241,
  title  = {Relative Astrometry of Compact Flaring Structures in Sgr A* with Polarimetric VLBI},
  author = {Michael D. Johnson and Vincent L. Fish and Sheperd S. Doeleman and Avery E. Broderick and John F. C. Wardle and Daniel P. Marrone},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.6241},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

9 Pages, 4 Figures, accepted for publication in ApJ