Ring Asymmetry and Spin in M87*
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2026-04-03 v2
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 . We show that, for strongly magnetized (MAD) models, three epochs of EHT data marginally disfavor . 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.00394,
title = {Ring Asymmetry and Spin in M87*},
author = {Vadim Bernshteyn and Nicholas S. Conroy and Michi Bauböck and Paul Tiede and Abhishek V. Joshi and Ben S. Prather and Charles F. Gammie and the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration and : and Kazunori Akiyama and Ezequiel Albentosa-Ruíz and Antxon Alberdi and Walter Alef and Juan Carlos Algaba and Richard Anantua and Keiichi Asada and Rebecca Azulay and Anne-Kathrin Baczko and David Ball and Bidisha Bandyopadhyay and John Barrett and Bradford A. Benson and Dan Bintley and Lindy Blackburn and Raymond Blundell and Katherine L. Bouman and Geoffrey C. Bower and Michael Bremer and Roger Brissenden and Silke Britzen and Avery E. Broderick and Dominique Broguiere and Thomas Bronzwaer and Sandra Bustamante and Douglas F. Carlos and John E. Carlstrom and Andrew Chael and Chi-kwan Chan and Dominic O. Chang and Koushik Chatterjee and Ming-Tang Chen and Yongjun Chen and Xiaopeng Cheng and Paul Chichura and Ilje Cho and John E. Conway and Thomas M. Crawford and Geoffrey B. Crew and Alejandro Cruz-Osorio and Yuzhu Cui and Brandon Curd and Rohan Dahale and Jordy Davelaar and Mariafelicia De Laurentis and Roger Deane and Jason Dexter and Vedant Dhruv and Indu K. Dihingia and Sheperd S. Doeleman and Sergio A. Dzib and Razieh Emami and Heino Falcke and Joseph Farah and Vincent L. Fish and Edward Fomalont and H. Alyson Ford and Marianna Foschi and Raquel Fraga-Encinas and William T. Freeman and Per Friberg and Christian M. Fromm and Antonio Fuentes and Peter Galison and Roberto García and Olivier Gentaz and Boris Georgiev and Ciriaco Goddi and Roman Gold and Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz and José L. Gómez and Minfeng Gu and Mark Gurwell and Kazuhiro Hada and Daryl Haggard and Ronald Hesper and Dirk Heumann and Luis C. Ho and Paul Ho and Mareki Honma and Chih-Wei L. Huang and Lei Huang and David H. Hughes and Shiro Ikeda and C. M. Violette Impellizzeri and Makoto Inoue and Sara Issaoun and David J. James and Buell T. Jannuzi and Michael Janssen and Britton Jeter and Wu Jiang and Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales and Michael D. Johnson and Svetlana Jorstad and Adam C. Jones and Taehyun Jung and Tomohisa Kawashima and Garrett K. Keating and Mark Kettenis and Dong-Jin Kim and Jae-Young Kim and Jongsoo Kim and Junhan Kim and Motoki Kino and Jun Yi Koay and Prashant Kocherlakota and Yutaro Kofuji and Patrick M. Koch and Shoko Koyama and Carsten Kramer and Joana A. Kramer and Michael Kramer and Thomas P. Krichbaum and Cheng-Yu Kuo and Noemi La Bella and Deokhyeong Lee and Sang-Sung Lee and Aviad Levis and Shaoliang Li and Zhiyuan Li and Rocco Lico and Greg Lindahl and Michael Lindqvist and Mikhail Lisakov and Jun Liu and Kuo Liu and Elisabetta Liuzzo and Wen-Ping Lo and Andrei P. Lobanov and Laurent Loinard and Colin J. Lonsdale and Amy E. Lowitz and Ru-Sen Lu and Nicholas R. MacDonald and Jirong Mao and Nicola Marchili and Sera Markoff and Daniel P. Marrone and Alan P. Marscher and Iván Martí-Vidal and Satoki Matsushita and Lynn D. Matthews and Lia Medeiros and Karl M. Menten and Hugo Messias and Izumi Mizuno and Yosuke Mizuno and Joshua Montgomery and Kotaro Moriyama and Monika Moscibrodzka and Wanga Mulaudzi and Cornelia Müller and Hendrik Müller and Alejandro Mus and Gibwa Musoke and Ioannis Myserlis and Hiroshi Nagai and Neil M. Nagar and Dhanya G. Nair and Masanori Nakamura and Gopal Narayanan and Iniyan Natarajan and Antonios Nathanail and Santiago Navarro Fuentes and Joey Neilsen and Chunchong Ni and Michael A. Nowak and Hiroki Okino and Héctor Raúl Olivares Sánchez and Feryal Özel and Daniel C. M. Palumbo and Georgios Filippos Paraschos and Jongho Park and Harriet Parsons and Nimesh Patel and Ue-Li Pen and Dominic W. Pesce and Vincent Piétu and Alexander Plavin and Aleksandar PopStefanija and Oliver Porth and Giacomo Principe and Dimitrios Psaltis and Hung-Yi Pu and Alexandra Rahlin and Venkatessh Ramakrishnan and Ramprasad Rao and Mark G. Rawlings and Luciano Rezzolla and Angelo Ricarte and Luca Ricci and Bart Ripperda and Jan Röder and Freek Roelofs and Cristina Romero-Cañizales and Eduardo Ros and Arash Roshanineshat and Helge Rottmann and Alan L. Roy and Ignacio Ruiz and Chet Ruszczyk and Kazi L. J. Rygl and León D. S. Salas and Salvador Sánchez and David Sánchez-Argüelles and Miguel Sánchez-Portal and Mahito Sasada and Kaushik Satapathy and Saurabh and Tuomas Savolainen and Karl-Friedrich Schuster and Zhiqiang Shen and Sasikumar Silpa and Randall Smith and Bong Won Sohn and Jason SooHoo and Kamal Souccar and Joshua S. Stanway and He Sun and Alexandra J. Tetarenko and Remo P. J. Tilanus and Michael Titus and Kenji Toma and Pablo Torne and Teresa Toscano and Efthalia Traianou and Sascha Trippe and Matthew Turk and Ilse van Bemmel and Huib Jan van Langevelde and Daniel R. van Rossum and Sebastiano D. von Fellenberg and Jesse Vos and Jan Wagner and Derek Ward-Thompson and John Wardle and Jasmin E. Washington and Jonathan Weintroub and Maciek Wielgus and Kaj Wiik and Michael F. Wondrak and George N. Wong and Jompoj Wongphexhauxsorn and Qingwen Wu and Paul Yamaguchi and Aristomenis Yfantis and Doosoo Yoon and André Young and Ziri Younsi and Wei Yu and Feng Yuan and Ye-Fei Yuan and Ai-Ling Zeng and J. Anton Zensus and Shuo Zhang and Guang-Yao Zhao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.00394},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Published by ApJ. 10 figures, 3 tables