Key Science Goals for the Next-Generation Event Horizon Telescope

Publication date

2023-06

Authors

Johnson, Michael
Akiyama, Kazunori
Blackburn, Lindy
Bouman, Katherine L
Broderick, Avery
Cardoso, Vitor
Fender, Rob
Fromm, Christian
Galison, Peter
Gómez, Jose L.

Editors

Advisors

Supervisors

Document Type

Article
Open Access logo

License

cc_by

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.

Keywords

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

Citation

Johnson, M, Akiyama, K, Blackburn, L, Bouman, K L, Broderick, A, Cardoso, V, Fender, R, Fromm, C, Galison, P, Gómez, J L, Haggard, D, Lister, M, Lobanov, A, Markoff, S, Narayan, R, Natarajan, P, Nichols, T, Pesce, D W, Younsi, Z, Chael, A, Chatterjee, K, Chaves, R, Doboszewski, J, Dodson, R, Doeleman, S, Elder, J, Fitzpatrick, G, Haworth, K, Houston, J, Issaoun, S, Kovalev, Y, Levis, A, ROCCO, LICO, Marcoci, A, Martens, N, Nagar, N, Oppenheimer, A, Palumbo, D, Ricarte, A, Rioja, M J, Roelofs, F, Thresher, A C, Tiede, P, Weintroub, J & Wielgus, M 2023, 'Key Science Goals for the Next-Generation Event Horizon Telescope', Galaxies, vol. 11, no. 3, 61. https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies11030061