The Intrinsic Structure of Sagittarius A* at 1.3cm and 7mm

Ilje Cho, Guang Yao Zhao, Tomohisa Kawashima, Motoki Kino, Kazunori Akiyama, Michael D. Johnson, Sara Issaoun, Kotaro Moriyama, Xiaopeng Cheng, Juan Carlos Algaba, Taehyun Jung, Bong Won Sohn, Thomas P. Krichbaum, Maciek Wielgus, Kazuhiro Hada, Ru Sen Lu, Yuzhu Cui, Satoko Sawada-Satoh, Zhiqiang Shen, Jongho ParkHyunwook Ro, Wu Jiang, Kunwoo Yi, Kiyoaki Wajima, Jee Won Lee, Jeffrey Hodgson, Fumie Tazaki, Mareki Honma, Kotaro Niinuma, Sascha Trippe, Tao An, Yingkang Zhang, Jeong Ae Lee, Se Jin Oh, Do Young Byun, Sang Sung Lee, Jae Young Kim, Junghwan Oh, Shoko Koyama, Xuezheng Wang, Lang Cui, Keiichi Asada, Yoshiaki Hagiwara, Masanori Nakamura, Mieko Takamura, Tomoya Hirota, Koichiro Sugiyama, Noriyuki Kawaguchi, Hideyuki Kobayashi, Tomoaki Oyama, Yoshinori Yonekura, Jongsoo Kim, Ju Yeon Hwang, Dong Kyu Jung, Hyo Ryoung Kim, Jeong Sook Kim, Chung Sik Oh, Duk Gyoo Roh, Jae Hwan Yeom, Bo Xia, Weiye Zhong, Bin Li, Rongbing Zhao, Jinqing Wang, Qinghui Liu, Zhong Chen

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Abstract

Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the Galactic Center supermassive black hole (SMBH), is one of the best targets in which to resolve the innermost region of an SMBH with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). In this study, we have carried out observations toward Sgr A* at 1.349 cm (22.223 GHz) and 6.950 mm (43.135 GHz) with the East Asian VLBI Network, as a part of the multiwavelength campaign of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in 2017 April. To mitigate scattering effects, the physically motivated scattering kernel model from Psaltis et al. (2018) and the scattering parameters from Johnson et al. (2018) have been applied. As a result, a single, symmetric Gaussian model well describes the intrinsic structure of Sgr A* at both wavelengths. From closure amplitudes, the major-axis sizes are ∼704 ± 102 μas (axial ratio ∼1.19-+0.190.24) and ∼300 ± 25 μas (axial ratio ∼1.28 ± 0.2) at 1.349 cm and 6.95 mm, respectively. Together with a quasi-simultaneous observation at 3.5 mm (86 GHz) by Issaoun et al. (2019), we show that the intrinsic size scales with observing wavelength as a power law, with an index ∼1.2 ± 0.2. Our results also provide estimates of the size and compact flux density at 1.3 mm, which can be incorporated into the analysis of the EHT observations. In terms of the origin of radio emission, we have compared the intrinsic structures with the accretion flow scenario, especially the radiatively inefficient accretion flow based on the Keplerian shell model. With this, we show that a nonthermal electron population is necessary to reproduce the source sizes.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberac4165
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume926
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Feb 2022

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