Relations Between Neutron-Star Parameters in the Hartle-Thorne Approximation

Using stellar structure calculations in the Hartle-Thorne approximation, we derive analytic expressions connecting the ellipticity of the stellar surface to the compactness, the spin angular momentum, and the quadrupole moment of the spacetime. We also obtain empirical relations between the compactness, the spin angular momentum, and the spacetime quadrupole. Our formulae reproduce the results of numerical calculations to within a few percent and help reduce the number of parameters necessary to model the observational appearance of moderately spinning neutron stars. This is sufficient for comparing theoretical spectroscopic and timing models to observations that aim to measure the masses and radii of neutron stars and to determine the equation of state prevailing in their interiors.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Ap

Atmospheric Structure and Radiation Pattern for Neutron-Star Polar Caps Heated by Magnetospheric Return Currents

The Neutron-star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) is collecting data to measure the radii of neutron stars by observing the pulsed emission from their surfaces. The primary targets are isolated, rotation-powered pulsars, in which the surface polar caps are heated by bombardment from magnetospheric currents of electrons and positrons. We investigate various stopping mechanisms for the beams of particles that bombard the atmosphere and calculate the heat deposition, the atmospheric temperature profiles, and the energy spectra and beaming of the emerging radiation. We find that low-energy particles with {\gamma} $\sim 2-10$ deposit most of their energy in the upper regions of the atmosphere, at low optical depth, resulting in beaming patterns that are substantially different than those of deep-heated, radiative equilibrium models. Only particles with energies {\gamma} $\gtrsim 50$ penetrate to high optical depths and fulfill the conditions necessary for a deep-heating approximation. We discuss the implications of our work for modeling the pulse profiles from rotation-powered pulsars and for the inference of their radii with NICER observations.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Ap

Measuring Neutron Star Radii via Pulse Profile Modeling with NICER

The Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is an X-ray astrophysics payload that will be placed on the International Space Station. Its primary science goal is to measure with high accuracy the pulse profiles that arise from the non-uniform thermal surface emission of rotation-powered pulsars. Modeling general relativistic effects on the profiles will lead to measuring the radii of these neutron stars and to constraining their equation of state. Achieving this goal will depend, among other things, on accurate knowledge of the source, sky, and instrument backgrounds. We use here simple analytic estimates to quantify the level at which these backgrounds need to be known in order for the upcoming measurements to provide significant constraints on the properties of neutron stars. We show that, even in the minimal-information scenario, knowledge of the background at a few percent level for a background-to-source countrate ratio of 0.2 allows for a measurement of the neutron star compactness to better than 10% uncertainty for most of the parameter space. These constraints improve further when more realistic assumptions are made about the neutron star emission and spin, and when additional information about the source itself, such as its mass or distance, are incorporated.Comment: Submitted to Ap

Rotation in Event Horizon Telescope Movies

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced images of M87* and Sgr A*, and will soon produce time sequences of images, or movies. In anticipation of this, we describe a technique to measure a rotation rate, or pattern speed $\Omega_p$, from movies using an autocorrelation technique. We validate the technique on Gaussian random field models with a known rotation rate and apply it to a library of synthetic images of Sgr A* based on general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulations. We predict that EHT movies will have $\Omega_p \approx 1$ degree per $\mathrm{GMc^{-3}}$, which is of order $15\%$ of the Keplerian orbital frequency in the emitting region. We can plausibly attribute the slow rotation seen in our models to the pattern speed of inward-propagating spiral shocks. We also find that $\Omega_p$ depends strongly on inclination. Application of this technique will enable us to compare future EHT movies with the clockwise rotation of Sgr A* seen in near-infrared flares by GRAVITY. Pattern speed analysis of future EHT observations of M87* and Sgr A* may also provide novel constraints on black hole inclination and spin, as well as an independent measurement of black hole mass

First Sagittarius A Event Horizon Telescope results. IV. Variability, morphology, and black hole mass

REST OF AUTHORS : Dempsey, Jessica; Desvignes, Gregory; Dexter, Jason; Dhruv, Vedant; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Dougal, Sean; Dzib, Sergio A.; Eatough, Ralph P.; Emami, Razieh; Falcke, Heino; Farah, Joseph; Fish, Vincent L.; Fomalont, Ed; Ford, H. Alyson; Fraga-Encinas, Raquel; Freeman, William T.; Friberg, Per; Fromm, Christian M.; Fuentes, Antonio; Galison, Peter; Gammie, Charles F.; Garcia, Roberto; Gentaz, Olivier; Georgiev, Boris; Goddi, Ciriaco; Gold, Roman; Gomez-Ruiz, Arturo, I; Gomez, Jose L.; Gu, Minfeng; Gurwell, Mark; Hada, Kazuhiro; Haggard, Daryl; Haworth, Kari; Hecht, Michael H.; Hesper, Ronald; Heumann, Dirk; Ho, Luis C.; Ho, Paul; Honma, Mareki; Huang, Chih-Wei L.; Huang, Lei; Hughes, David H.; Ikeda, Shiro; Impellizzeri, C. M. Violette; Inoue, Makoto; Issaoun, Sara; James, David J.; Jannuzi, Buell T.; Janssen, Michael; Jeter, Britton; Jiang, Wu; Jimenez-Rosales, Alejandra; Johnson, Michael D.; Jorstad, Svetlana; Joshi, Abhishek, V; Jung, Taehyun; Karami, Mansour; Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Kawashima, Tomohisa; Keating, Garrett K.; Kettenis, Mark; Kim, Dong-Jin; Kim, Jae-Young; Kim, Jongsoo; Kim, Junhan; Kino, Motoki; Koay, Jun Yi; Kocherlakota, Prashant; Kofuji, Yutaro; Koch, Patrick M.; Koyama, Shoko; Kramer, Carsten; Kramer, Michael; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Kuo, Cheng-Yu; La Bella, Noemi; Lauer, Tod R.; Lee, Daeyoung; Lee, Sang-Sung; Leung, Po Kin; Levis, Aviad; Li, Zhiyuan; Lico, Rocco; Lindahl, Greg; Lindqvist, Michael; Lisakov, Mikhail; Liu, Jun; Liu, Kuo; Liuzzo, Elisabetta; Lo, Wen-Ping; Lobanov, Andrei P.; Loinard, Laurent; Lonsdale, Colin J.; Lu, Ru-Sen; Mao, Jirong; Marchili, Nicola; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Marscher, Alan P.; Marti-Vidal, Ivan; Matsushita, Satoki; Matthews, Lynn D.; Medeiros, Lia; Menten, Karl M.; Michalik, Daniel; Mizuno, Izumi; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moran, James M.; Moriyama, Kotaro; Moscibrodzka, Monika; Muller, Cornelia; Mus, Alejandro; Musoke, Gibwa; Myserlis, Ioannis; Nadolski, Andrew; Nagai, Hiroshi; Nagar, Neil M.; Nakamura, Masanori; Narayan, Ramesh; Narayanan, Gopal; Natarajan, Iniyan; Nathanail, Antonios; Fuentes, Santiago Navarro; Neilsen, Joey; Neri, Roberto; Ni, Chunchong; Noutsos, Aristeidis; Nowak, Michael A.; Oh, Junghwan; Okino, Hiroki; Olivares, Hector; Ortiz-Leon, Gisela N.; Oyama, Tomoaki; Palumbo, Daniel C. M.; Paraschos, Georgios Filippos; Park, Jongho; Parsons, Harriet; Patel, Nimesh; Pen, Ue-Li; Pesce, Dominic W.; Pietu, Vincent; Plambeck, Richard; PopStefanija, Aleksandar; Porth, Oliver; Potzl, Felix M.; Prather, Ben; Preciado-Lopez, Jorge A.; Pu, Hung-Yi; Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh; Rao, Ramprasad; Rawlings, Mark G.; Raymond, Alexander W.; Rezzolla, Luciano; Ricarte, Angelo; Ripperda, Bart; Roelofs, Freek; Rogers, Alan; Ros, Eduardo; Romero-Canizales, Cristina; Roshanineshat, Arash; Rottmann, Helge; Roy, Alan L.; Ruiz, Ignacio; Ruszczyk, Chet; Rygl, Kazi L. J.; Sanchez, Salvador; Sanchez-Arguelles, David; Sanchez-Portal, Miguel; Sasada, Mahito; Satapathy, Kaushik; Savolainen, Tuomas; Schloerb, F. Peter; Schonfeld, Jonathan; Schuster, Karl-Friedrich; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Zhiqiang; Small, Des; Sohn, Bong Won; SooHoo, Jason; Souccar, Kamal; Sun, He; Tazaki, Fumie; Tetarenko, Alexandra J.; Tiede, Paul; Tilanus, Remo P. J.; Titus, Michael; Torne, Pablo; Traianou, Efthalia; Trent, Tyler; Trippe, Sascha; Turk, Matthew; van Bemmel, Ilse; van Langevelde, Huib Jan; van Rossum, Daniel R.; Vos, Jesse; Wagner, Jan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wardle, John; Weintroub, Jonathan; Wex, Norbert; Wharton, Robert; Wielgus, Maciek; Wiik, Kaj; Witzel, Gunther; Wondrak, Michael F.; Wong, George N.; Wu, Qingwen; Yamaguchi, Paul; Yoon, Doosoo; Young, Andre; Young, Ken; Younsi, Ziri; Yuan, Feng; Yuan, Ye-Fei; Zensus, J. Anton; Zhang, Shuo; Zhao, Guang-Yao; Zhao, Shan-Shan; Chang, Dominic O.Please read abstract in the article.We thank an anonymous referee for insightful and constructive comments that helped improve the quality of this paper. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration thanks the following organizations and programs: the Academia Sinica; the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496, 315721); the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), Chile via NCN19_058 (TITANs) and Fondecyt 1221421, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; Allegro, the European ALMA Regional Centre node in the Netherlands, the NL astronomy research network NOVA and the astronomy institutes of the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University and Radboud University; the ALMA North America Development Fund; the Black Hole Initiative, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (although the opinions expressed in this work are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of these Foundations); Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the China Scholarship Council; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation fellowship (2020M671266); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, Mexico, projects U0004- 246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, 263356); the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant 2019AEP112); the Delaney Family via the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute; Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA-UNAM, projects IN112417 and IN112820); the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and grant OCENW.KLEIN.113; the Dutch National Supercomputers, Cartesius and Snellius (NWO Grant 2021.013); the EACOA Fellowship awarded by the East Asia Core Observatories Association, which consists of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Center for Astronomical Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute; the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant “BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes” (grant 610058); the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements RadioNet (No 730562) and M2FINDERS (No 101018682); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; the European Research Council for advanced grant ‘JETSET: Launching, propagation and emission of relativistic jets from binary mergers and across mass scales’ (Grant No. 884631); the Institute for Advanced Study; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; DFG research grant “Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond” (Grant No. FR 4069/2-1); Joint Princeton/ Flatiron and Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships, research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation; the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT; grant JPMXP1020200109); the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Joint Institute for Computational Fundamental Science, Japan; the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJSSW-SYS008, ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship; the Max-Planck- Gesellschaft (MPG); the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS; the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grants 18KK0090, JP21H01137, JP18H03721, JP18K13594, 18K03709, JP19K14761, 18H01245, 25120007); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) FRGS/1/ 2019/STG02/UM/02/6; the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (103-2119-M-001-010- MY2, 105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 105-2119-M-001-042, 106- 2112-M-001-011, 106-2119-M-001-013, 106-2119-M-001- 027, 106-2923-M-001-005, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119- M-001-020, 107-2119-M-001-041, 107-2119-M-110-005, 107-2923-M-001-009, 108-2112-M-001-048, 108-2112-M- 001-051, 108-2923-M-001-002, 109-2112-M-001-025, 109- 2124-M-001-005, 109-2923-M-001-001, 110-2112-M-003- 007-MY2, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007, and 110-2923-M-001-001); the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Taiwan Yushan Young Scholar Program; the Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences of Taiwan; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51431.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555; the National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant 2016YFA0400704, 2017YFA0402703, 2016YFA0400702); the National Science Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST- 0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST- 1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST-1207704, AST- 1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP-1248097, AST- 1310896, AST-1440254, AST-1555365, AST-1614868, AST- 1615796, AST-1715061, AST-1716327, AST-1716536, OISE- 1743747, AST-1816420, AST-1935980, AST-2034306); NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AST- 1903847); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312, 11873028, 11933007, 11991052, 11991053, 12192220, 12192223); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF- 2015H1A2A1033752, the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, Brain Pool Program: 2019H1D3A1A01102564, Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721, 2021R1A6A3A01086420, 2022R1C1C1005255); Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) Virtual Institute of Accretion (VIA) postdoctoral fellowships; Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) national infrastructure, for the provisioning of its facilities/ observational support (OSO receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under grant 2017-00648); the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science); the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grants PGC2018-098915- B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, PID2019-108995GB-C21, PID2020-117404GB-C21); the University of Pretoria for financial aid in the provision of the new Cluster Server nodes and SuperMicro (USA) for a SEEDING GRANT approved towards these nodes in 2020; the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2021-013); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017- 0709); the Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the South African Research Chairs Initiative, through the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO, grant ID 77948), which is a facility of the National Research Foundation (NRF), an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) of South Africa; the Toray Science Foundation; Swedish Research Council (VR); the US Department of Energy (USDOE) through the Los Alamos National Laboratory (operated by Triad National Security, LLC, for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the USDOE (Contract 89233218CNA000001); and the YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship. We thank the staff at the participating observatories, correlation centers, and institutions for their enthusiastic support. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.01154.V. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), NSF, and National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, together with National Research Council (Canada), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)/NRAO, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The NRAO is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by AUI. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. We also thank the Center for Computational Astrophysics, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The computing cluster of Shanghai VLBI correlator supported by the Special Fund for Astronomy from the Ministry of Finance in China is acknowledged. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany), ESO, and the Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden). The SMA is a joint project between the SAO and ASIAA and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. The JCMT is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of the NAOJ, ASIAA, and KASI, as well as the Ministry of Finance of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Key Research and Development Program (No. 2017YFA0402700) of China and Natural Science Foundation of China grant 11873028. Additional funding support for the JCMT is provided by the Science and Technologies Facility Council (UK) and participating universities in the UK and Canada. The LMT is a project operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrófisica, Óptica, y Electrónica (Mexico) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). The IRAM 30-m telescope on Pico Veleta, Spain is operated by IRAM and supported by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), MPG (Max-Planck- Gesellschaft, Germany) and IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain). The SMT is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory, a part of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, with financial support of operations from the State of Arizona and financial support for instrumentation development from the NSF. Support for SPT participation in the EHT is provided by the National Science Foundation through award OPP-1852617 to the University of Chicago. Partial support is also provided by the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. The SPT hydrogen maser was provided on loan from the GLT, courtesy of ASIAA. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant ACI-1548562, and CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI- 0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. XSEDE Stampede2 resource at TACC was allocated through TG-AST170024 and TG-AST080026N. XSEDE JetStream resource at PTI and TACC was allocated through AST170028. This research is part of the Frontera computing project at the Texas Advanced Computing Center through the Frontera Large-Scale Community Partnerships allocation AST20023. Frontera is made possible by National Science Foundation award OAC-1818253. This research was carried out using resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Additional work used ABACUS2.0, which is part of the eScience center at Southern Denmark University. Simulations were also performed on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart, and on the Pi2.0 and Siyuan Mark-I at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The computer resources of the Finnish IT Center for Science (CSC) and the Finnish Computing Competence Infrastructure (FCCI) project are acknowledged. This research was enabled in part by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca) and Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca). The EHTC has received generous donations of FPGA chips from Xilinx Inc., under the Xilinx University Program. The EHTC has benefited from technology shared under open-source license by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER). The EHT project is grateful to T4Science and Microsemi for their assistance with Hydrogen Masers. This research has made use of NASAʼs Astrophysics Data System. We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the extended staff of the ALMA, both from the inception of the ALMA Phasing Project through the observational campaigns of 2017 and 2018. We would like to thank A. Deller and W. Brisken for EHT-specific support with the use of DiFX. We thank Martin Shepherd for the addition of extra features in the Difmap software that were used for the CLEAN imaging results presented in this paper. We acknowledge the significance that Maunakea, where the SMA and JCMT EHT stations are located, has for the indigenous Hawaiian people. IMV acknowledges the use of LLuis Vives HPC resources of the University of Valencia.http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205am2023Physic

First Sagittarius A Event Horizon Telescope results. VI. Testing the black hole metric

REST OF AUTHORS : Dempsey, Jessica; Desvignes, Gregory; Dexter, Jason; Dhruv, Vedant; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Dougal, Sean; Dzib, Sergio A.; Eatough, Ralph P.; Emami, Razieh; Falcke, Heino; Farah, Joseph; Fish, Vincent L.; Fomalont, Ed; Ford, H. Alyson; Fraga-Encinas, Raquel; Freeman, William T.; Friberg, Per; Fromm, Christian M.; Fuentes, Antonio; Galison, Peter; Gammie, Charles F.; Garcia, Roberto; Gentaz, Olivier; Georgiev, Boris; Goddi, Ciriaco; Gold, Roman; Gomez-Ruiz, Arturo, I; Gomez, Jose L.; Gu, Minfeng; Gurwell, Mark; Hada, Kazuhiro; Haggard, Daryl; Haworth, Kari; Hecht, Michael H.; Hesper, Ronald; Heumann, Dirk; Ho, Luis C.; Ho, Paul; Honma, Mareki; Huang, Chih-Wei L.; Huang, Lei; Hughes, David H.; Ikeda, Shiro; Impellizzeri, C. M. Violette; Inoue, Makoto; Issaoun, Sara; James, David J.; Jannuzi, Buell T.; Janssen, Michael; Jeter, Britton; Jiang, Wu; Jimenez-Rosales, Alejandra; Johnson, Michael D.; Jorstad, Svetlana; Joshi, Abhishek, V; Jung, Taehyun; Karami, Mansour; Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Kawashima, Tomohisa; Keating, Garrett K.; Kettenis, Mark; Kim, Dong-Jin; Kim, Jae-Young; Kim, Jongsoo; Kim, Junhan; Kino, Motoki; Koay, Jun Yi; Kocherlakota, Prashant; Kofuji, Yutaro; Koch, Patrick M.; Koyama, Shoko; Kramer, Carsten; Kramer, Michael; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Kuo, Cheng-Yu; La Bella, Noemi; Lauer, Tod R.; Lee, Daeyoung; Lee, Sang-Sung; Leung, Po Kin; Levis, Aviad; Li, Zhiyuan; Lico, Rocco; Lindahl, Greg; Lindqvist, Michael; Lisakov, Mikhail; Liu, Jun; Liu, Kuo; Liuzzo, Elisabetta; Lo, Wen-Ping; Lobanov, Andrei P.; Loinard, Laurent; Lonsdale, Colin J.; Lu, Ru-Sen; Mao, Jirong; Marchili, Nicola; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Marscher, Alan P.; Marti-Vidal, Ivan; Matsushita, Satoki; Matthews, Lynn D.; Medeiros, Lia; Menten, Karl M.; Michalik, Daniel; Mizuno, Izumi; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moran, James M.; Moriyama, Kotaro; Moscibrodzka, Monika; Muller, Cornelia; Mus, Alejandro; Musoke, Gibwa; Myserlis, Ioannis; Nadolski, Andrew; Nagai, Hiroshi; Nagar, Neil M.; Nakamura, Masanori; Narayan, Ramesh; Narayanan, Gopal; Natarajan, Iniyan; Nathanail, Antonios; Fuentes, Santiago Navarro; Neilsen, Joey; Neri, Roberto; Ni, Chunchong; Noutsos, Aristeidis; Nowak, Michael A.; Oh, Junghwan; Okino, Hiroki; Olivares, Hector; Ortiz-Leon, Gisela N.; Oyama, Tomoaki; Ozel, Feryal; Palumbo, Daniel C. M.; Paraschos, Georgios Filippos; Park, Jongho; Parsons, Harriet; Patel, Nimesh; Pen, Ue-Li; Pesce, Dominic W.; Pietu, Vincent; Plambeck, Richard; PopStefanija, Aleksandar; Porth, Oliver; Potzl, Felix M.; Prather, Ben; Preciado-Lopez, Jorge A.; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Pu, Hung-Yi; Ramakrishnan, Venkatessh; Rao, Ramprasad; Rawlings, Mark G.; Raymond, Alexander W.; Rezzolla, Luciano; Ricarte, Angelo; Ripperda, Bart; Roelofs, Freek; Rogers, Alan; Ros, Eduardo; Romero-Canizales, Cristina; Roshanineshat, Arash; Rottmann, Helge; Roy, Alan L.; Ruiz, Ignacio; Ruszczyk, Chet; Rygl, Kazi L. J.; Sanchez, Salvador; Sanchez-Arguelles, David; Sanchez-Portal, Miguel; Sasada, Mahito; Satapathy, Kaushik; Savolainen, Tuomas; Schloerb, F. Peter; Schonfeld, Jonathan; Schuster, Karl-Friedrich; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Zhiqiang; Small, Des; Sohn, Bong Won; SooHoo, Jason; Souccar, Kamal; Sun, He; Tazaki, Fumie; Tetarenko, Alexandra J.; Tiede, Paul; Tilanus, Remo P. J.; Titus, Michael; Torne, Pablo; Traianou, Efthalia; Trent, Tyler; Trippe, Sascha; Turk, Matthew; van Bemmel, Ilse; van Langevelde, Huib Jan; van Rossum, Daniel R.; Vos, Jesse; Wagner, Jan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wardle, John; Weintroub, Jonathan; Wex, Norbert; Wharton, Robert; Wielgus, Maciek; Wiik, Kaj; Witzel, Gunther; Wondrak, Michael F.; Wong, George N.; Wu, Qingwen; Yamaguchi, Paul; Yoon, Doosoo; Young, Andre; Young, Ken; Younsi, Ziri; Yuan, Feng; Yuan, Ye-Fei; Zensus, J. Anton; Zhang, Shuo; Zhao, Guang-Yao; Zhao, Shan-Shan.Astrophysical black holes are expected to be described by the Kerr metric. This is the only stationary, vacuum, axisymmetric metric, without electromagnetic charge, that satisfies Einstein’s equations and does not have pathologies outside of the event horizon. We present new constraints on potential deviations from the Kerr prediction based on 2017 EHT observations of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). We calibrate the relationship between the geometrically defined black hole shadow and the observed size of the ring-like images using a library that includes both Kerr and non-Kerr simulations. We use the exquisite prior constraints on the mass-to-distance ratio for Sgr A* to show that the observed image size is within ∼10% of the Kerr predictions. We use these bounds to constrain metrics that are parametrically different from Kerr, as well as the charges of several known spacetimes. To consider alternatives to the presence of an event horizon, we explore the possibility that Sgr A* is a compact object with a surface that either absorbs and thermally reemits incident radiation or partially reflects it. Using the observed image size and the broadband spectrum of Sgr A*, we conclude that a thermal surface can be ruled out and a fully reflective one is unlikely. We compare our results to the broader landscape of gravitational tests. Together with the bounds found for stellar-mass black holes and the M87 black hole, our observations provide further support that the external spacetimes of all black holes are described by the Kerr metric, independent of their mass.The authors thank the anonymous referee for comments that improved the manuscript. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration thanks the following organizations and programs: the Academia Sinica; the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496, 315721); the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), Chile via NCN19_058 (TITANs) and Fondecyt 1221421, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; Allegro, the European ALMA Regional Centre node in the Netherlands, the NL astronomy research network NOVA and the astronomy institutes of the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University and Radboud University; the ALMA North America Development Fund; the Black Hole Initiative, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (although the opinions expressed in this work are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of these Foundations); Chandra DD7-18089X and TM6-17006X; the China Scholarship Council; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation fellowship (2020M671266); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, Mexico, projects U0004- 246083, U0004-259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, 263356); the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant 2019AEP112); the Delaney Family via the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute; Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA-UNAM, projects IN112417 and IN112820); the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and grant OCENW.KLEIN.113; the Dutch National Supercomputers, Cartesius and Snellius (NWO Grant 2021.013); the EACOA Fellowship awarded by the East Asia Core Observatories Association, which consists of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Center for Astronomical Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute; the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant “BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes” (grant 610058); the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements RadioNet (No 730562) and M2FINDERS (No 101018682); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; the European Research Council for advanced grant ‘JETSET: Launching, propagation and emission of relativistic jets from binary mergers and across mass scales’ (Grant No. 884631); the Institute for Advanced Study; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; DFG research grant “Jet physics on horizon scales and beyond” (Grant No. FR 4069/2-1); Joint Princeton/ Flatiron and Joint Columbia/Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships, research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation; the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT; grant JPMXP1020200109); the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Joint Institute for Computational Fundamental Science, Japan; the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJSSW-SYS008, ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship; the Max-Planck- Gesellschaft (MPG); the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS; the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grants 18KK0090, JP21H01137, JP18H03721, JP18K13594, 18K03709, JP19K14761, 18H01245, 25120007); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) FRGS/1/ 2019/STG02/UM/02/6; the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (103-2119-M-001-010- MY2, 105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 105-2119-M-001-042, 106- 2112-M-001-011, 106-2119-M-001-013, 106-2119-M-001- 027, 106-2923-M-001-005, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119- M-001-020, 107-2119-M-001-041, 107-2119-M-110-005, 107- 2923-M-001-009, 108-2112-M-001-048, 108-2112-M-001- 051, 108-2923-M-001-002, 109-2112-M-001-025, 109-2124- M-001-005, 109-2923-M-001-001, 110-2112-M-003-007- MY2, 110-2112-M-001-033, 110-2124-M-001-007, and 110- 2923-M-001-001); the Ministry of Education (MoE) of Taiwan Yushan Young Scholar Program; the Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences of Taiwan; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51431.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555; the National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant 2016YFA0400704, 2017YFA0402703, 2016YFA0400702); the National Science Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST- 0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST- 1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST-1207704, AST- 1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP-1248097, AST- 1310896, AST-1440254, AST-1555365, AST-1614868, AST- 1615796, AST-1715061, AST-1716327, AST-1716536, OISE- 1743747, AST-1816420, AST-1935980, AST-2034306); NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AST- 1903847); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312, 11873028, 11933007, 11991052, 11991053, 12192220, 12192223); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF- 2015H1A2A1033752, the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, Brain Pool Program: 2019H1D3A1A01102564, Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721, 2021R1A6A3A01086420, 2022R1C1C1005255); Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) Virtual Institute of Accretion (VIA) postdoctoral fellowships; Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) national infrastructure, for the provisioning of its facilities/ observational support (OSO receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under grant 2017-00648); the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science); the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grants PGC2018-098915- B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, PID2019-108995GB-C21, PID2020-117404GB-C21); the University of Pretoria for financial aid in the provision of the new Cluster Server nodes and SuperMicro (USA) for a SEEDING GRANT approved towards these nodes in 2020; the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research, Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai Branch (JCYJ-SHFY-2021-013); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709); the Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the South African Research Chairs Initiative, through the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO, grant ID 77948), which is a facility of the National Research Foundation (NRF), an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) of South Africa; the Toray Science Foundation; Swedish Research Council (VR); the US Department of Energy (USDOE) through the Los Alamos National Laboratory (operated by Triad National Security, LLC, for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the USDOE (Contract 89233218CNA000001); and the YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship. We thank the staff at the participating observatories, correlation centers, and institutions for their enthusiastic support. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.01154.V. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), NSF, and National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, together with National Research Council (Canada), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)/NRAO, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The NRAO is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by AUI. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. We also thank the Center for Computational Astrophysics, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The computing cluster of Shanghai VLBI correlator supported by the Special Fund for Astronomy from the Ministry of Finance in China is acknowledged. APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany), ESO, and the Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden). The SMA is a joint project between the SAO and ASIAA and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. The JCMT is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of the NAOJ, ASIAA, and KASI, as well as the Ministry of Finance of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Key Research and Development Program (No. 2017YFA0402700) of China and Natural Science Foundation of China grant 11873028. Additional funding support for the JCMT is provided by the Science and Technologies Facility Council (UK) and participating universities in the UK and Canada. The LMT is a project operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrófisica, Óptica, y Electrónica (Mexico) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). The IRAM 30-m telescope on Pico Veleta, Spain is operated by IRAM and supported by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), MPG (Max-Planck- Gesellschaft, Germany) and IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain). The SMT is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory, a part of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, with financial support of operations from the State of Arizona and financial support for instrumentation development from the NSF. Support for SPT participation in the EHT is provided by the National Science Foundation through award OPP-1852617 to the University of Chicago. Partial support is also provided by the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. The SPT hydrogen maser was provided on loan from the GLT, courtesy of ASIAA. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant ACI-1548562, and CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI- 0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. XSEDE Stampede2 resource at TACC was allocated through TGAST170024 and TG-AST080026N. XSEDE JetStream resource at PTI and TACC was allocated through AST170028. This research is part of the Frontera computing project at the Texas Advanced Computing Center through the Frontera Large-Scale Community Partnerships allocation AST20023. Frontera is made possible by National Science Foundation award OAC-1818253. This research was carried out using resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Additional work used ABACUS2.0, which is part of the eScience center at Southern Denmark University. Simulations were also performed on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart, and on the Pi2.0 and Siyuan Mark-I at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The computer resources of the Finnish IT Center for Science (CSC) and the Finnish Computing Competence Infrastructure (FCCI) project are acknowledged. This research was enabled in part by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca) and Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca). The EHTC has received generous donations of FPGA chips from Xilinx Inc., under the Xilinx University Program. The EHTC has benefited from technology shared under open-source license by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER). The EHT project is grateful to T4Science and Microsemi for their assistance with Hydrogen Masers. This research has made use of NASAʼs Astrophysics Data System. We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the extended staff of the ALMA, both from the inception of the ALMA Phasing Project through the observational campaigns of 2017 and 2018. We would like to thank A. Deller and W. Brisken for EHT-specific support with the use of DiFX. We thank Martin Shepherd for the addition of extra features in the Difmap software that were used for the CLEAN imaging results presented in this paper. We acknowledge the significance that Maunakea, where the SMA and JCMT EHT stations are located, has for the indigenous Hawaiian people. IMV acknowledges the use of LLuis Vives HPC resources of the University of Valencia.http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205am2023Physic

Resolving the inner parsec of the blazar J1924–2914 with the Event Horizon Telescope

Rest of authors: Ikeda, Shiro; Impellizzeri, C. M. Violette; Inoue, Makoto; James, David J.; Jannuzi, Buell T.; Jeter, Britton; Jiang, Wu; Jimenez-Rosales, Alejandra; Johnson, Michael D.; Joshi, Abhishek, V; Jung, Taehyun; Karami, Mansour; Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Kawashima, Tomohisa; Keating, Garrett K.; Kettenis, Mark; Kim, Dong-Jin; Kim, Jae-Young; Kim, Jongsoo; Kim, Junhan; Kino, Motoki; Koay, Jun Yi; Kocherlakota, Prashant; Kofuji, Yutaro; Koch, Patrick M.; Koyama, Shoko; Kramer, Carsten; Kramer, Michael; Kuo, Cheng-Yu; La Bella, Noemi; Lauer, Tod R.; Lee, Daeyoung; Lee, Sang-Sung; Leung, Po Kin; Levis, Aviad; Li, Zhiyuan; Lindahl, Greg; Lindqvist, Michael; Liu, Kuo; Liuzzo, Elisabetta; Lo, Wen-Ping; Lobanov, Andrei P.; Lonsdale, Colin; Mao, Jirong; Marchili, Nicola; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Marscher, Alan P.; Matsushita, Satoki; Matthews, Lynn D.; Medeiros, Lia; Menten, Karl M.; Michalik, Daniel; Mizuno, Izumi; Mizuno, Yosuke; Moran, James M.; Mueller, Cornelia; Mus, Alejandro; Musoke, Gibwa; Myserlis, Ioannis; Nadolski, Andrew; Nagai, Hiroshi; Nagar, Neil M.; Nakamura, Masanori; Narayan, Ramesh; Narayanan, Gopal; Natarajan, Iniyan; Nathanail, Antonios; Neilsen, Joey; Neri, Roberto; Ni, Chunchong; Noutsos, Aristeidis; Nowak, Michael A.; Oh, Junghwan; Okino, Hiroki; Olivares, Hector; Ortiz-Leon, Gisela N.; Oyama, Tomoaki; Ozel, Feryal; Palumbo, Daniel C. M.; Paraschos, Georgios Filippos; Park, Jongho; Parsons, Harriet; Patel, Nimesh; Pen, Ue-Li; Pietu, Vincent; Plambeck, Richard; PopStefanija, Aleksandar; Porth, Oliver; Potzl, Felix M.; Prather, Ben; Preciado-Lopez, Jorge A.; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Pu, Hung-Yi; Rao, Ramprasad; Rawlings, Mark G.; Raymond, Alexander W.; Rezzolla, Luciano; Ricarte, Angelo; Ripperda, Bart; Roelofs, Freek; Rogers, Alan; Ros, Eduardo; Romero-Canizales, Cristina; Roshanineshat, Arash; Rottmann, Helge; Roy, Alan L.; Ruiz, Ignacio; Ruszczyk, Chet; Rygl, Kazi L. J.; Sanchez, Salvador; Sanchez-Arguelles, David; Sanchez-Portal, Miguel; Sasada, Mahito; Satapathy, Kaushik; Savolainen, Tuomas; Schloerb, F. Peter; Schuster, Karl-Friedrich; Shao, Lijing; Shen, Zhiqiang; Small, Des; Sohn, Bong Won; SooHoo, Jason; Souccar, Kamal; Sun, He; Tazaki, Fumie; Tetarenko, Alexandra J.; Tilanus, Remo P. J.; Titus, Michael; Torne, Pablo; Trent, Tyler; Trippe, Sascha; van Bemmel, Ilse; van Langevelde, Huib Jan; van Rossum, Daniel R.; Vos, Jesse; Wagner, Jan; Ward-Thompson, Derek; Wardle, John; Weintroub, Jonathan; Wex, Norbert; Wharton, Robert; Wiik, Kaj; Witzel, Gunther; Wondrak, Michael; Wong, George N.; Wu, Qingwen; Yamaguchi, Paul; Yoon, Doosoo; Young, Andre; Young, Ken; Younsi, Ziri; Yuan, Feng; Yuan, Ye-Fei; Zensus, J. Anton; Zhang, Shuo; Zhao, Shan-Shan.The blazar J1924–2914 is a primary Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) calibrator for the Galactic center’s black hole Sagittarius A*. Here we present the first total and linearly polarized intensity images of this source obtained with the unprecedented 20 μas resolution of the EHT. J1924–2914 is a very compact flat-spectrum radio source with strong optical variability and polarization. In April 2017 the source was observed quasi-simultaneously with the EHT (April 5–11), the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (April 3), and the Very Long Baseline Array (April 28), giving a novel view of the source at four observing frequencies, 230, 86, 8.7, and 2.3 GHz. These observations probe jet properties from the subparsec to 100 pc scales. We combine the multifrequency images of J1924–2914 to study the source morphology. We find that the jet exhibits a characteristic bending, with a gradual clockwise rotation of the jet projected position angle of about 90° between 2.3 and 230 GHz. Linearly polarized intensity images of J1924–2914 with the extremely fine resolution of the EHT provide evidence for ordered toroidal magnetic fields in the blazar compact core.We thank the anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful and helpful comments. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration thanks the following organizations and programs: the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496, 315721); the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), Chile via NCN19_058 (TITANs) and Fondecyt 3190878, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; Allegro, the European ALMA Regional Centre node in the Netherlands, the NL astronomy research network NOVA and the astronomy institutes of the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University and Radboud University; the black hole Initiative at Harvard University, through a grant (60477) from the John Templeton Foundation; the China Scholarship Council; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, Mexico, projects U0004-246083, U0004- 259839, F0003-272050, M0037-279006, F0003-281692, 104497, 275201, 263356); the Delaney Family via the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute; Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA-UNAM, projects IN112417 and IN112820); the European Research Council Synergy Grant “BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes” (grant 610058); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177 and GenT Program (project CIDEGENT/2018/021); MICINN Research Project PID2019-108995GB-C22; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grant GBMF-3561); the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; Joint Princeton/Flatiron and Joint Columbia/ Flatiron Postdoctoral Fellowships, research at the Flatiron Institute is supported by the Simons Foundation; the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in- Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJSSWSYS008, ZDBS-LY-SLH011); the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship; the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG); the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS; the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grants 18KK0090, JP18K13594, JP18K03656, JP18H03721, 18K03709, 18H01245, 25120007); the Malaysian Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) FRGS/1/2019/STG02/UM/02/6; the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119- M-001-027, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M- 001-020, 107-2119-M-110-005, 108-2112-M-001-048, and 109-2124-M-001-005); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC20K1567, NASA Astrophysics Theory Program grant 80NSSC20K0527, NASA NuSTAR award 80NSSC20K0645); the National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant 2016YFA0400704, 2016YFA0400702); the National Science Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST- 0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST- 0922984, AST-1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST- 1207704, AST-1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP- 1248097, AST-1310896, AST-1555365,AST-1615796, AST- 1715061, AST-1716327, AST-1903847,AST-2034306); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11573051, 11633006, 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312, 11933007, 11991052, 11991053); a fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M671266); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF- 2015H1A2A1033752, 2015- R1D1A1A01056807, the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, Basic Research Support Grant 2019R1F1A1059721); the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the New Scientific Frontiers with Precision Radio Interferometry Fellowship awarded by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), which is a facility of the National Research Foundation (NRF), an agency of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of South Africa; the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) national infrastructure, for the provisioning of its facilities/observational support (OSO receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under grant 2017-00648) the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science); the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grants PGC2018-098915-B-C21, AYA2016-80889-P, PID2019-108995GB-C21); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709); the Toray Science Foundation; the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad of the Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-1769), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant 2019AEP112); the US Department of Energy (USDOE) through the Los Alamos National Laboratory (operated by Triad National Security, LLC, for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the USDOE (Contract 89233218CNA000001); the European Unionʼs Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 730562 RadioNet; ALMA North America Development Fund; the Academia Sinica; Chandra DD7- 18089X and TM6-17006X; the GenT Program (Generalitat Valenciana) Project CIDEGENT/2018/021. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant ACI-1548562, and CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. XSEDE Stampede2 resource at TACC was allocated through TG-AST170024 and TG-AST080026N. XSEDE JetStream resource at PTI and TACC was allocated through AST170028. The simulations were performed in part on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, and on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart. This research was enabled in part by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca) and Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca). We thank the staff at the participating observatories, correlation centers, and institutions for their enthusiastic support. This paper makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2016.1.01154.V and ADS/JAO.ALMA2016.1.00413.V. ALMA is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Europe, representing its member states), NSF, and National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan, together with National Research Council (Canada), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST; Taiwan), Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA; Taiwan), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI; Republic of Korea), in cooperationwith the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI)/NRAO, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The NRAO is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by AUI. APEX is a collaboration between the Max- Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany), ESO, and the Onsala Space Observatory (Sweden). The SMA is a joint project between the SAO and ASIAA and is funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academia Sinica. The JCMT is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of the NAOJ, ASIAA, and KASI, as well as the Ministry of Finance of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Key R&D Program (No. 2017YFA0402700) of China. Additional funding support for the JCMT is provided by the Science and Technologies Facility Council (UK) and participating universities in the UK and Canada. The LMT is a project operated by the Instituto Nacional de Astrófisica, Óptica, y Electrónica (Mexico) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). The IRAM 30 m telescope on Pico Veleta, Spain is operated by IRAM and supported by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), MPG (Max-Planck- Gesellschaft, Germany) and IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Spain). The SMT is operated by the Arizona Radio Observatory, a part of the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona, with financial support of operations from the State of Arizona and financial support for instrumentation development from the NSF. Support for SPT participation in the EHT is provided by the National Science Foundation through award OPP-1852617 to the University of Chicago. Partial support is also provided by the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. The SPT hydrogen maser was provided on loan from the GLT, courtesy of ASIAA. The EHTC has received generous donations of FPGA chips from Xilinx Inc., under the Xilinx University Program. The EHTC has benefited from technology shared under open-source license by the Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER). The EHT project is grateful to T4Science and Microsemi for their assistance with Hydrogen Masers. This research has made use of NASAʼs Astrophysics Data System. We gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the extended staff of the ALMA, both from the inception of the ALMA Phasing Project through the observational campaigns of 2017 and 2018. We would like to thank A. Deller and W. Brisken for EHT-specific support with the use of DiFX. We acknowledge the significance that Maunakea, where the SMA and JCMT EHT stations are located, has for the indigenous Hawaiian people. We also thank Alexandra Elbakyan for her contributions to the open science initiative. This research has made use of data obtained with the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA), coordinated by the VLBI group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR). The GMVA consists of telescopes operated by MPIfR, IRAM, Onsala, Metsahovi, Yebes, the Korean VLBI Network, the Green Bank Observatory, and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The VLBA and the GBT are facilities of the National Science Foundation under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The data were correlated at the DiFX correlator of the MPIfR in Bonn, Germany. We thank the National Science Foundation (awards OISE-1743747, AST-1816420, AST-1716536, AST- 1440254, AST-1935980) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-5278) for financial support of this work. Support for this work was also provided by the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51431.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555.http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637Xam2023Physic

Constraining the Neutron Star Mass–Radius Relation and Dense Matter Equation of State with NICERNICER. I. The Millisecond Pulsar X-Ray Data Set

International audienceWe present the set of deep Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray timing observations of the nearby rotation-powered millisecond pulsars PSRs J0437−4715, J0030+0451, J1231−1411, and J2124−3358, selected as targets for constraining the mass–radius relation of neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state (EoS) via modeling of their pulsed thermal X-ray emission. We describe the instrument, observations, and data processing/reduction procedures, as well as the series of investigations conducted to ensure that the properties of the data sets are suitable for parameter estimation analyses to produce reliable constraints on the neutron star mass–radius relation and the dense matter EoS. We find that the long-term timing and flux behavior and the Fourier-domain properties of the event data do not exhibit any anomalies that could adversely affect the intended measurements. From phase-selected spectroscopy, we find that emission from the individual pulse peaks is well described by a single-temperature hydrogen atmosphere spectrum, with the exception of PSR J0437−4715, for which multiple temperatures are required