Key Science Goals for the Next-Generation Event Horizon Telescope

Michael Johnson, Kazunori Akiyama, Lindy Blackburn, Katherine L Bouman, Avery Broderick, Vitor Cardoso, Rob Fender, Christian Fromm, Peter Galison, Jose L. Gómez, Daryl Haggard, Matthew Lister, Andrei Lobanov, Sera Markoff, Ramesh Narayan, Priyamvada Natarajan, Tiffany Nichols, Dominic W. Pesce, Ziri Younsi, Andrew ChaelKoushik Chatterjee, Ryan Chaves, Juliusz Doboszewski, Richard Dodson, Sheperd Doeleman, Jamee Elder, Garret Fitzpatrick, Kari Haworth, Janice Houston, Sara Issaoun, Yuri Kovalev, Aviad Levis, LICO ROCCO, Alexandru Marcoci, Niels Martens, Neil Nagar, Aaron Oppenheimer, Daniel Palumbo, Angelo Ricarte, Maria J. Rioja, Freek Roelofs, Ann C Thresher, Paul Tiede, Jonathan Weintroub, Maciek Wielgus

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has led to the first images of a supermassive black hole, revealing the central compact objects in the elliptical galaxy M87 and the Milky Way. Proposed upgrades to this array through the next-generation EHT (ngEHT) program would sharply improve the angular resolution, dynamic range, and temporal coverage of the existing EHT observations. These improvements will uniquely enable a wealth of transformative new discoveries related to black hole science, extending from event-horizon-scale studies of strong gravity to studies of explosive transients to the cosmological growth and influence of supermassive black holes. Here, we present the key science goals for the ngEHT and their associated instrument requirements, both of which have been formulated through a multi-year international effort involving hundreds of scientists worldwide.
Original languageEnglish
Article number61
Number of pages38
JournalGalaxies
Volume11
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The ngEHT design studies are funded by National Science Foundation grants AST-1935980 and AST-2034306 and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-10423). This work was supported by the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to Harvard University. This work was supported by Volkswagen Foundation, VILLUM Foundation (grant no. VIL37766) and the DNRF Chair program (grant no. DNRF162) by the Danish National Research Foundation. We acknowledge financial support provided under the European Union’s H2020 ERC Advanced Grant “Black holes: gravitational engines of discovery” grant agreement no. Gravitas–101052587. NCMM acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme for the funding received under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101065772 (PhilDarkEnergy) and the ERC Starting Grant agreement No. 101076402 (COSMO-MASTER). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. NN acknowledges funding from TITANs NCN19-058 and Fondecyt 1221421.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the authors.

Keywords

  • black holes
  • general relativity
  • interferometry
  • accretion
  • relativistic jets
  • very-long-baseline interferometry
  • EHT
  • ngEHT

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