The Details of Limb Brightening Reveal the Structure of the Base of the Jet in M87 for the First Time

Abstract

It has become commonplace in astronomy to describe the transverse coarse structure of jets in loosely defined terms such as “sheath” and “spine” based on discussions of parsec scale properties. But, the applicability, dimension, and prominence of these features on sub-light-year scales has previously been unconstrained by observation. The first direct evidence of jet structure near the source in M87 is extreme limb brightening (a double-rail morphology), 0.3–0.6 mas from the source, which is prominent in observations with high resolution and sensitivity. Intensity crosscuts of these images provide three strong, interdependent constraints on the geometry responsible for the double-rail morphology: the rail to rail separation, the peak to trough intensity ratio, and the rail widths. Analyzing these constraints indicates that half or more of the jet volume resides in a thick-walled, tubular, mildly relativistic, protonic jet only ∼0.25 lt-yr (or ∼300 M, where M is the central black hole mass in geometrized units) from the source. By contrast, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration interprets their observations with the aid of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations that produce an invisible (by construction) jet with a surrounding luminous, thin sheath. Yet, it is shown that synthetic images of simulated jets are center brightened 0.3–0.6 mas from the source. This serious disconnection with observation occurs in a region previously claimed in the literature to be well represented by the simulations. The limb brightening analysis motivates a discussion of possible simulation modifications to improve conformance with observations.