The Role of Adaptive Ray Tracing in Analyzing Black Hole Structure

Abstract

Abstract The recent advent of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has made direct imaging of supermassive black holes a reality. Simulated images of black holes produced via general relativistic ray tracing and radiative transfer provide a key counterpart to these observational efforts. Black hole images have a wide range of physically interesting image structures, ranging from extremely fine scales in their lensed “photon rings” to the very large scales in their relativistic jets. The multiscale nature of the black hole system is therefore suitable for a multiscale approach to generate simulated images that capture all key elements of the system. Here, we present a prescription for adaptive ray tracing, which enables efficient computation of extremely high-resolution images of black holes. Using the polarized ray-tracing code ipole, we image a combination of semianalytic and general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) models, and we show that images can be reproduced with a mean squared error of less than 0.1% even after tracing 12× fewer rays. We then use adaptive ray tracing to explore the properties of the photon ring. We illustrate the behavior of individual subrings in GRMHD simulations, and we explore their signatures in interferometric visibilities.