The Accretion Flow in M87 is Really MAD

Abstract

The supermassive black holes in most galaxies in the universe are powered by hot accretion flows. Both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations have indicated that, depending on the degree of magnetization, black hole hot accretion flow is divided into two modes, namely SANE (standard and normal evolution) and MAD (magnetically arrested disk). It has been an important question which mode the hot accretion flows in individual sources should belong to in reality, SANE or MAD. This issue has been investigated in some previous works but they all suffer from various uncertainties. By using the measured rotation measure (RM) values in the prototype low-luminosity active galactic nuclei in M87 at 2, 5, and 8 GHz along the jet at various distances from the black hole, combined with three-dimensional general relativity magnetohydrodynamical numerical simulations of SANE and MAD, we show in this paper that the RM values predicted by MAD are well consistent with observations, while the SANE model overestimates the RM by over two orders of magnitude and thus is ruled out.