Modeling Seven Years of Event Horizon Telescope Observations with Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow Models

Understand

An initial three-station version of the Event Horizon Telescope, a millimeter-wavelength very-long baseline interferometer, has observed Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) repeatedly from 2007 to 2013, resulting in the measurement of a variety of interferometric quantities.

• Of particular importance, there is now a large set of closure phases, measured over a number of independent observing epochs.
• We analyze these observations within the context of a realization of semi-analytic radiatively inefficient disk models, implicated by the low luminosity of Sgr A*.
• We find a broad consistency among the various observing epochs and between different interferometric data types, with the latter providing significant support for this class of models of Sgr A*.