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Register a new userDetection of the gravitational redshift in the orbit of the star S2 near the Galactic centre massive black hole
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The highly elliptical, 16-year-period orbit of the star S2 around the massive black hole candidate Sgr A* is a sensitive probe of the gravitational field in the Galactic centre. Near pericentre at 120 AU, ~1400 Schwarzschild radii, the star has an orbital speed of ~7650 km/s, such that the first-order effects of Special and General Relativity have now become detectable with current capabilities. Over the past 26 years, we have monitored the radial velocity and motion on the sky of S2, mainly with the SINFONI and NACO adaptive optics instruments on the ESO Very Large Telescope, and since 2016 and leading up to the pericentre approach in May 2018, with the four-telescope interferometric beam-combiner instrument GRAVITY. From data up to and including pericentre, we robustly detect the combined gravitational redshift and relativistic transverse Doppler effect for S2 of z ~ 200 km/s / c with different statistical analysis methods. When parameterising the post-Newtonian contribution from these effects by a factor f, with f = 0 and f = 1 corresponding to the Newtonian and general relativistic limits, respectively, we find from posterior fitting with different weighting schemes f = 0.90 +/- 0.09 (stat) +- 0.15 (sys). The S2 data are inconsistent with pure Newtonian dynamics.
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The star S2 orbiting the compact radio source Sgr A* is a precision probe of the gravitational field around the closest massive black hole (candidate). Over the last 2.7 decades we have monitored the stars radial velocity and motion on the sky, mainly with the SINFONI and NACO adaptive optics (AO) instruments on the ESO VLT, and since 2017, with the four-telescope interferometric beam combiner instrument GRAVITY. In this paper we report the first detection of the General Relativity (GR) Schwarzschild Precession (SP) in S2s orbit. Owing to its highly elliptical orbit (e = 0.88), S2s SP is mainly a kink between the pre-and post-pericentre directions of motion ~ +- 1 year around pericentre passage, relative to the corresponding Kepler orbit. The superb 2017-2019 astrometry of GRAVITY defines the pericentre passage and outgoing direction. The incoming direction is anchored by 118 NACO-AO measurements of S2s position in the infrared reference frame, with an additional 75 direct measurements of the S2-Sgr A* separation during bright states (flares) of Sgr A*. Our 14-parameter model fits for the distance, central mass, the position and motion of the reference frame of the AO astrometry relative to the mass, the six parameters of the orbit, as well as a dimensionless parameter f_SP for the SP (f_SP = 0 for Newton and 1 for GR). From data up to the end of 2019 we robustly detect the SP of S2, del phi = 12 per orbital period. From posterior fitting and MCMC Bayesian analysis with different weighting schemes and bootstrapping we find f_SP = 1.10 +- 0.19. The S2 data are fully consistent with GR. Any extended mass inside S2s orbit cannot exceed ~ 0.1% of the central mass. Any compact third mass inside the central arcsecond must be less than about 1000 M_sun.
General Relativity predicts that a star passing close to a supermassive black hole should exhibit a relativistic redshift. We test this using observations of the Galactic center star S0-2. We combine existing spectroscopic and astrometric measurements from 1995-2017, which cover S0-2s 16-year orbit, with measurements in 2018 March to September which cover three events during its closest approach to the black hole. We detect the combination of special relativistic- and gravitational-redshift, quantified using a redshift parameter, $Upsilon$. Our result, $Upsilon=0.88 pm 0.17$, is consistent with General Relativity ($Upsilon=1$) and excludes a Newtonian model ($Upsilon=0$ ) with a statistical significance of 5 $sigma$.
The so-called S2 star reached its closest approach to the massive black hole (BH) at around 1500 $R_mathrm{s}$ in May 2018. It has been proposed that the interaction of its stellar wind with the high-density accretion flow at this distance from Sgr A* will lead to a detectable, month-long X-ray flare. Our goal is to verify whether or not the S2 star wind can be used as a diagnostic tool to infer the properties of the accretion flow towards Sgr A* at its pericentre (an unprobed distance regime), putting important constraints on BH accretion flow models. We run a series of three-dimensional adaptive mesh refinement simulations with the help of the Ramses code which include the realistic treatment of the interaction of S2s stellar wind with the accretion flow along its orbit and - apart from hydrodynamical and thermodynamical effects - include the tidal interaction with the massive BH. These are post-processed to derive the X-ray emission in the observable 2-10 keV window. No significant excess of X-ray emission from Sgr A* is found for typical accretion flow models. A measurable excess is produced for a significantly increased density of the accretion flow. This can, however, be ruled out for standard power-law accretion flow models as in this case the thermal X-ray emission without the S2 wind interaction would already exceed the observed quiescent luminosity. Only a significant change of the wind parameters (increased mass loss rate and decreased wind velocity) might lead to an (marginally) observable X-ray flaring event. Even the detection of an (month-long) X-ray flare during the pericentre passage of the S2 star would not allow for strict constraints to be put on the accretion flow around Sgr A* due to the degeneracy caused by the dependence on multiple parameters (of the accretion flow model as well as the stellar wind).
Precise measurements of the S-stars orbiting SgrA* have set strong constraints on the nature of the compact object at the centre of the Milky Way. The presence of a black hole in that region is well established, but its neighboring environment is still an open debate. In that respect, the existence of dark matter in that central region may be detectable due to its strong signatures on the orbits of stars: the main effect is a Newtonian precession which will affect the overall pericentre shift of S2, the latter being a target measurement of the GRAVITY instrument. The exact nature of this dark matter (e.g., stellar dark remnants or diffuse dark matter) is unknown. This article assumes it to be an scalar field of toroidal distribution, associated with ultra-light dark matter particles, surrounding the Kerr black hole. Such a field is a form of hair expected in the context of superradiance, a mechanism that extracts rotational energy from the black hole. Orbital signatures for the S2 star are computed and shown to be detectable by GRAVITY. The scalar field can be constrained because the variation of orbital elements depends both on the relative mass of the scalar field to the black hole and on the field mass coupling parameter.
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.
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