Submillimeter quasi-periodic oscillations in magnetically choked accretion flow models of sgrA*

Abstract

High-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) appear in general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of magnetically choked accretion flows around rapidly rotating black holes (BHs). We perform polarized radiative transfer calculations with the ASTRORAY code to explore the manifestations of these QPOs for SgrA*. We construct a simulation-based model of a radiatively inefficient accretion flow and find model parameters by fitting the mean polarized source spectrum. The simulated QPOs have a total submillimeter flux amplitude up to 5% and a linearly polarized flux amplitude up to 2%. The oscillations reach high levels of significance 10σ-30σ and high-quality factors Q ≈ 5. The oscillation period T ≈ 100 M ≈ 35 minutes corresponds to the rotation period of the BH magnetosphere that produces a trailing spiral in resolved disk images. The total flux signal is significant over noise for all tested frequencies 87 GHz, 230 GHz, and 857 GHz and inclination angles 10°, 37°, and 80°. The non-detection in the 230 GHz SubMillimeter Array light curve is consistent with a low signal level and a low sampling rate. The presence of submillimeter QPOs in SgrA* will be better tested with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.