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General relativity predicts that images of optically thin accretion flows around black holes should generically have a ``photon ring,'' composed of a series of increasingly sharp subrings that correspond to increasingly strongly lensed…
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…
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…
General relativity predicts that black hole images ought to display a bright, thin (and as-of-yet-unresolved) ring. This "photon ring" is produced by photons that explore the strong gravity of the black hole, flowing along trajectories that…
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…
Accurately inferring black hole spin is crucial for understanding black hole dynamics and their astrophysical environments. In this work, we outline a geometric method for spin estimation by using the interferometric shape of the first…
High-frequency very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations can now resolve the horizon-scale emission from sources in the immediate vicinity of nearby supermassive black holes. Future space-VLBI observations will access highly…
Horizon-scale imaging with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has provided transformative insights into supermassive black holes but its resolution and scope are limited by ground-based constraints such as the size of the Earth, its…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) recently released the first linearly polarized images of the accretion flow around the supermassive black hole Messier 87*, hereafter \m{}. The spiraling polarization pattern found in EHT images favored…
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…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global sub-millimeter wavelength very long baseline interferometry array, is now resolving the innermost regions around the supermassive black holes Sgr A* and M87. Using black hole images from both…
Photon rings near the edge of a black hole shadow is supposed to be a unique tool to validate general relativity and provide reliable measurements of principal black hole parameters: spin and mass. Such measurements are possible though only…
Recent advances in technology coupled with the progress of observational radio astronomy methods resulted in achieving a major milestone of astrophysics - a direct image of the shadow of a supermassive black hole, taken by the Earth-based…
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…
Images of black holes encode both astrophysical and gravitational properties. Detecting highly-lensed features in images can differentiate between these two effects. We present an accretion disk emission model coupled to the Adaptive…
Light passing near a black hole can follow multiple paths from an emission source to an observer due to strong gravitational lensing. Photons following different paths take different amounts of time to reach the observer, which produces an…
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…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has imaged two supermassive black holes, Messier 87* (M87*) and Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), using very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). The theoretical analyses of each source suggest magnetically arrested…
Submillimeter interferometry has the potential to image supermassive black holes on event horizon scales, providing tests of the theory of general relativity and increasing our understanding of black hole accretion processes. The Event…
The Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), an orbiting, multi-band, millimeter radio-telescope, in hybrid combination with millimeter terrestrial radio-telescopes, is designed to discover and measure the thin photon ring around the supermassive black…