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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 Park
  • Wu Jiang, Hyunwook Ro, Kunwoo Yi, Kiyoaki Wajima, Jeewon Lee, Jeffrey A. 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, Keiichi Asada, Xuezheng Wang, Lang Cui, Yoshiaki Hagiwara, Masanori Nakamura, Mieko Takamura, Tomoya Hirota, Koichiro Sugiyama, Noriyuki Kawaguchi, Hideyuki Kobayashi, Tomoaki Oyama

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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 number108
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume926
Issue number2
Early online date22 Feb 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2022

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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