H0 Tension on the Light of Supermassive Black Hole Shadows Data

Abstract

Cosmological tensions in current times have opened a wide door to study new probes to constrain cosmological parameters, specifically, to determine the value of the Hubble constant H0 through independent techniques. The two standard methods to measure/infer H0 rely on: (i) anchored observables for the distance ladder, and (ii) establishing the relationship of the H0 to the angular size of the sound horizon in the recombination era assuming a standard Cosmological Constant Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) cosmology. However, the former requires a calibration with observables at nearby distances, while the latter is not a direct measurement and is model-dependent. The physics behind these aspects restrains our possibilities in selecting a calibration method that can help minimise the systematic effects or in considering a fixed cosmological model background. Anticipating the possibility of deeply exploring the physics of new nearby observables such as the recently detected black hole shadows, in this paper we propose standard rules to extend the studies related to these observables. Supermassive black hole shadows can be characterised by two parameters: the angular size of the shadow and the black hole mass. We found that it is possible to break the degeneracy between these parameters by forecasting and fixing certain conditions at high(er) redshifts, i.e., instead of considering the ≈10% precision from the EHT array, our results reach a ≈4%, a precision that could be achievable in experiments in the near future. Furthermore, we found that our estimations provide a value of H0=72.89±0.12 km/s/Mpc and, for the baryonic mass density, Ωm=0.275±0.002, showing an improvement in the values reported so far in the literature. We anticipate that our results can be a starting point for more serious treatments of the physics behind the SMBH shadow data as cosmological probes to relax tension issues.