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Universal Interferometric Signatures of a Black Hole's Photon Ring

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arxiv 1907.04329 v2 pith:MU646LH7 submitted 2019-07-09 astro-ph.IM astro-ph.GAastro-ph.HEgr-qchep-th

Michael D. Johnson , Alexandru Lupsasca , Andrew Strominger , George N. Wong , Shahar Hadar , Daniel Kapec , Ramesh Narayan , Andrew Chael
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Charles F. Gammie Peter Galison Daniel C. M. Palumbo Sheperd S. Doeleman Lindy Blackburn Maciek Wielgus Dominic W. Pesce Joseph R. Farah James M. Moran
This is my paper · ORCID
classification astro-ph.IMastro-ph.GAastro-ph.HEgr-qchep-th
keywords blackholesubringsinterferometricphotonringsignaturesgeneral
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The Event Horizon Telescope image of the supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 is dominated by a bright, unresolved ring. General relativity predicts that embedded within this image lies a thin "photon ring," which is composed of an infinite sequence of self-similar subrings that are indexed by the number of photon orbits around the black hole. The subrings approach the edge of the black hole "shadow," becoming exponentially narrower but weaker with increasing orbit number, with seemingly negligible contributions from high order subrings. Here, we show that these subrings produce strong and universal signatures on long interferometric baselines. These signatures offer the possibility of precise measurements of black hole mass and spin, as well as tests of general relativity, using only a sparse interferometric array.

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Forward citations

Cited by 10 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Signatures of Lorentz violation in bright ring for Sgr A* images by radiation ineffective accretion flows

    astro-ph.HE 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For a rotating Lorentz-violating black hole, increasing the LV parameter shrinks and broadens Sgr A*'s image ring, and EHT data bound the parameter over a spin-dependent range.

  2. Dark matter environments and safeguards for spacetime inference from horizon scale interferometry

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Using public 2017 M87* closure data, a frozen Kerr source fails an absolute adequacy test and the differential tidal-charge response fails numerical convergence, so no posterior or bound is reported.

  3. Ringdown and lensing of triple systems

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Numerical relativity simulations of triple black hole systems reveal redshift effects and gravitational lensing in ringdown signals from head-on mergers, with no additional black hole formation from amplified waves.

  4. Critical Behavior of Photon Rings in Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson Spacetime

    gr-qc 2026-03 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For a magnetized Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson black hole, the photon-ring parameters gamma, delta, and tau all decrease compared with the unmagnetized Kerr case, weakening the self-similar stacking of higher-order images.

  5. Black Hole Mergers as the Fastest Photon Ring Scramblers

    gr-qc 2026-03 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Merger remnant mass and spin are claimed to maximize the average Lyapunov exponent of the photon shell of an effective Kerr black hole, matching numerical relativity fits within a few percent for q ≲ 20.

  6. Photon rings in a holographic toy model

    hep-th 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    In warped AdS3 black holes, the eikonal quasinormal-mode spectrum is governed exactly by the photon ring's orbital frequency and Lyapunov exponent, with different boundary conditions picking out the outer or inner ring.

  7. Polarization-dependent observational signatures of Weyl-coupled photons around a black hole

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.5 of 10

    Weyl-coupled photons on Schwarzschild produce a polarization-split double shadow (62% edge separation at α/M²=0.75) and a parity-protected backward birefringence signal that vanishes at α=0.

  8. Semi-analytical Study on the Polarized Images of Black Hole due to Frame Dragging

    gr-qc 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Frame dragging flips an initially retrograde equatorial flow around a Kerr black hole, and the polarized image shows three distinct critical locations whose spatial hierarchy is derived analytically for an on-axis observer.

  9. Testing Extended Theories of Gravity via Black Hole Photon Rings

    gr-qc 2025-05 conditional novelty 3.0 of 10

    For Konoplya-Zhidenko deformed Schwarzschild black holes, epsilon controls photon sphere, shadow, and photon ring size while a2 and b2 are observationally degenerate, and EHT data constrain epsilon to about -0.09 to 0...

  10. Modified theories of gravity at different curvature scales

    gr-qc 2025-02 unverdicted novelty 3.0 of 10

    A review that classifies modified gravity theories by the GR principles they preserve or violate, and maps their tests onto a curvature-compactness plane.

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