Related papers: Inferring Black Hole Spin from Interferometric Mea…
Currently envisioned extensions of the Event Horizon Telescope to space will soon target the black hole photon ring: a narrow ring-shaped imprint of a black hole's strong gravity produced in its images by highly bent photon trajectories. In…
Black hole images are theoretically predicted (under mild astrophysical assumptions) to display a stack of lensed "photon rings" that carry information about the underlying spacetime geometry. Despite vigorous efforts, no such ring has been…
The $n=1$ photon ring is a full image of the astrophysical source around a black hole, produced by photons that execute $n\approx1$ half-orbit around the event horizon on their way to an observer. The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) is a…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the first images of a black hole using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). In the near future, extensions of the EHT such as the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) will allow access to finer-scale…
The central supermassive black hole of the galaxy M87 is currently a target for precision spin measurement using high-resolution, horizon-scale imaging. Such observations aim to resolve the first lensed (${n}~{=}~{1}$) sub-image of the…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration recently released horizon-scale images of the supermassive black hole M87*. These images are consistently described by an optically thin, lensed accretion flow in the Kerr spacetime. General…
Motivated by the prospect of measuring a black hole photon ring, in previous work we explored the interferometric signature produced by a bright, narrow curve in the sky. Interferometric observations of such a curve measure its "projected…
Very-long baseline interferometric observations have resolved structure on scales of only a few Schwarzschild radii around the supermassive black holes at the centers of our Galaxy and M87. In the near future, such observations are expected…
By investigating the time-variable 230 GHz images using ray-tracing general relativistic radiative transfer calculation, we propose a novel method for estimating the spin parameter of the supermassive black hole at the M87 center by…
The $n=1$ photon ring is an important probe of black hole (BH) properties and will be resolved by the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) for the first time. However, extraction of black hole parameters from observations of the $n=1$ subring is not…
General relativity predicts that gravitational lensing near black holes will produce narrow "photon rings" on images. Building on recent work of Johnson, Lupsasca et al. focusing on circular rings, I calculate the long-baseline…
The direct detection of a bright, ring-like structure in horizon-resolving images of M87* by the Event Horizon Telescope is a striking validation of general relativity. The angular size and shape of the ring is a degenerate measure of the…
Black hole images present an annular region of enhanced brightness. In the absence of propagation effects, this "photon ring" has universal features that are completely governed by general relativity and independent of the details of the…
The Event Horizon Telescope image of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 is dominated by a bright, unresolved ring. General relativity predicts that embedded within this image lies a thin "photon ring," which is composed of an…
We propose a new test of strong-field general relativity (GR) based on the universal interferometric signature of the black hole photon ring. The photon ring is a narrow ring-shaped feature, predicted by GR but not yet observed, that…
Mass and spin are two fundamental properties of astrophysical black holes. While some established, indirect methods are adopted to measure both these properties of active galactic nuclei (AGN) when viewed relatively face-on, very few…
One of the primary means of determining the spin of an astrophysical black hole is by actually measuring the inner radius of a surrounding accretion disk and using that to infer the spin. By comparing a number of different estimates of the…
Simulated images of a black hole surrounded by optically thin emission typically display two main features: a central brightness depression and a narrow, bright "photon ring" consisting of strongly lensed images superposed on top of the…
We calculate the interferometric signatures of black hole photon rings beyond the universal regime by perturbatively including the effects of finite ring width. Our approach first slices a thick ring into a series of thin rings, each of…
Robustly measuring binary black hole spins via gravitational waves is key to understanding these systems' astrophysical origins, but remains challenging -- especially for high-mass systems, whose signals are short and dominated by the…