Millimeter Flares and VLBI Visibilities from Relativistic Simulations of Magnetized Accretion onto the Galactic Center Black Hole

Understand

The recent VLBI observation of the Galactic center black hole candidate Sgr A* at 1.3mm shows source structure on event-horizon scales.

• This detection enables a direct comparison of the emission region with models of the accretion flow onto the black hole.
• We present the first results from time-dependent radiative transfer of general relativistic MHD simulation data, and compare simulated synchrotron images at black hole spin a=0.9 with the VLBI measurements.
• After tuning the accretion rate to match the millimeter flux, we find excellent agreement between predicted and observed visibilities, even when viewed face-on (i < 30 degrees).