Pith. sign in

Canonical reference

Detection of orbital motions near the last stable circular orbit of the massive black hole SgrA*

Canonical reference. 100% of citing Pith papers cite this work as background.

8 Pith papers citing it
Background 100% of classified citations
abstract

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.

citation-role summary

background 5

citation-polarity summary

years

2026 7 2015 1

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 8

roles

background 5

polarities

background 5

representative citing papers

Superradiance -- the 2020 Edition

gr-qc · 2015-01-26 · unverdicted · novelty 4.0

Black-hole superradiance extracts energy via the ergoregion and can trigger instabilities with applications to dark matter, beyond-Standard-Model physics, and laboratory analogs.

citing papers explorer

Showing 8 of 8 citing papers.