Studying Black Holes on Horizon Scales with VLBI Ground Arrays
astro-ph.IM
/ Authors
Lindy Blackburn, Sheperd Doeleman, Jason Dexter, José L. Gómez, Michael D. Johnson, Daniel C. Palumbo, Jonathan Weintroub, Katherine L. Bouman, Andrew A. Chael, Joseph R. Farah
and 28 more authors
Vincent Fish, Laurent Loinard, Colin Lonsdale, Gopal Narayanan, Nimesh A. Patel, Dominic W. Pesce, Alexander Raymond, Remo Tilanus, Maciek Wielgus, Kazunori Akiyama, Geoffrey Bower, Avery Broderick, Roger Deane, Christian M. Fromm, Charles Gammie, Roman Gold, Michael Janssen, Tomohisa Kawashima, Thomas Krichbaum, Daniel P. Marrone, Lynn D. Matthews, Yosuke Mizuno, Luciano Rezzolla
/ Abstract
High-resolution imaging of supermassive black holes is now possible, with new applications to testing general relativity and horizon-scale accretion and relativistic jet formation processes. Over the coming decade, the EHT will propose to add new strategically placed VLBI elements operating at 1.3mm and 0.87mm wavelength. In parallel, development of next-generation backend instrumentation, coupled with high throughput correlation architectures, will boost sensitivity, allowing the new stations to be of modest collecting area while still improving imaging fidelity and angular resolution. The goal of these efforts is to move from imaging static horizon scale structure to dynamic reconstructions that capture the processes of accretion and jet launching in near real time.