SgrA* orbital motions with GRAVITY

DOI

We report the detection of continuous positional and polarization changes of the compact source SgrA* in high states ('flares') of its variable near- infrared emission with the near-infrared GRAVITY-Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) beam-combining instrument. In three prominent bright flares, the position centroids exhibit clockwise looped motion on the sky, on scales of typically 150 micro-arcseconds over a few tens of minutes, corresponding to about 30% the speed of light. At the same time, the flares exhibit continuous rotation of the polarization angle, with about the same 45(+/-15)-minute period as that of the centroid motions. Modelling with relativistic ray tracing shows that these findings are all consistent with a near face-on, circular orbit of a compact polarized 'hot spot' of infrared synchrotron emission at approximately six to ten times the gravitational radius of a black hole of 4 million solar masses. This corresponds to the region just outside the innermost, stable, prograde circular orbit (ISCO) of a Schwarzschild-Kerr black hole, or near the retrograde ISCO of a highly spun-up Kerr hole. The polarization signature is consistent with orbital motion in a strong poloidal magnetic field.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.36189010
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/618/L10
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/618/L10
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/A+A/618/L10
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/618/L10
Provenance
Creator GRAVITY Collaboration; Abuter; R.; Amorim; A.; Bauboeck M.; Berger J.P.,Bonnet H.; Brandner W.; Clenet Y.; Coude du Foresto V.; de Zeeuw P.T.,Deen C.; Dexter J.; Duvert G.; Eckart A.; Eisenhauer F.,Foerster Schreiber N.M.; Garcia P.; Gao F.; Gendron E.; Genzel R.,Gillessen S.; Guajardo P.; Habibi M.; Haubois X.; Henning T.; Hippler S.,Horrobin M.; Huber A.; Jimenez-Rosales A.; Jocou L.; Kervella P.,Lacour S.; Lapeyrere V.; Lazareff B.; Le Bouquin J.-B.; Lena P.; Lippa M.,Ott T.; Panduro J.; Paumard T.; Perraut K.; Perrin G.; Pfuhl O.; Plewa P.M.,Rabien S.; Rodriguez-Coira G.; Rousset G.; Sternberg A.; Straub O.,Straubmeier C.; Sturm E.; Tacconi L.J.; Vincent F.; von Fellenberg S.,Waisberg I.; Widmann F.; Wieprecht E.; Wiezorrek E.; Woillez J.; Yazici S.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2018
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics