The Astrophysical Journal (Jan 2023)

Comparison of Polarized Radiative Transfer Codes Used by the EHT Collaboration

  • Ben S. Prather,
  • Jason Dexter,
  • Monika Moscibrodzka,
  • Hung-Yi Pu,
  • Thomas Bronzwaer,
  • Jordy Davelaar,
  • Ziri Younsi,
  • Charles F. Gammie,
  • Roman Gold,
  • George N. Wong,
  • Kazunori Akiyama,
  • Antxon Alberdi,
  • Walter Alef,
  • Juan Carlos Algaba,
  • Richard Anantua,
  • Keiichi Asada,
  • Rebecca Azulay,
  • Uwe Bach,
  • Anne-Kathrin Baczko,
  • David Ball,
  • Mislav Baloković,
  • John Barrett,
  • Michi Bauböck,
  • Bradford A. Benson,
  • Dan Bintley,
  • Lindy Blackburn,
  • Raymond Blundell,
  • Katherine L. Bouman,
  • Geoffrey C. Bower,
  • Hope Boyce,
  • Michael Bremer,
  • Christiaan D. Brinkerink,
  • Roger Brissenden,
  • Silke Britzen,
  • Avery E. Broderick,
  • Dominique Broguiere,
  • Sandra Bustamante,
  • Do-Young Byun,
  • John E. Carlstrom,
  • Chiara Ceccobello,
  • Andrew Chael,
  • Chi-kwan Chan,
  • Dominic O. Chang,
  • Koushik Chatterjee,
  • Shami Chatterjee,
  • Ming-Tang Chen,
  • Yongjun Chen,
  • Xiaopeng Cheng,
  • Ilje Cho,
  • Pierre Christian,
  • Nicholas S. Conroy,
  • John E. Conway,
  • James M. Cordes,
  • Thomas M. Crawford,
  • Geoffrey B. Crew,
  • Alejandro Cruz-Osorio,
  • Yuzhu Cui,
  • Mariafelicia De Laurentis,
  • Roger Deane,
  • Jessica Dempsey,
  • Gregory Desvignes,
  • Vedant Dhruv,
  • Sheperd S. Doeleman,
  • Sean Dougal,
  • Sergio A. Dzib,
  • Ralph P. Eatough,
  • Razieh Emami,
  • Heino Falcke,
  • Joseph Farah,
  • Vincent L. Fish,
  • Ed Fomalont,
  • H. Alyson Ford,
  • Raquel Fraga-Encinas,
  • William T. Freeman,
  • Per Friberg,
  • Christian M. Fromm,
  • Antonio Fuentes,
  • Peter Galison,
  • Roberto García,
  • Olivier Gentaz,
  • Boris Georgiev,
  • Ciriaco Goddi,
  • Arturo I. Gómez-Ruiz,
  • José L. Gómez,
  • Minfeng Gu,
  • Mark Gurwell,
  • Kazuhiro Hada,
  • Daryl Haggard,
  • Kari Haworth,
  • Michael H. Hecht,
  • Ronald Hesper,
  • Dirk Heumann,
  • Luis C. Ho,
  • Paul Ho,
  • Mareki Honma,
  • Chih-Wei L. Huang,
  • Lei Huang,
  • David H. Hughes,
  • Shiro Ikeda,
  • C. M. Violette Impellizzeri,
  • Makoto Inoue,
  • Sara Issaoun,
  • David J. James,
  • Buell T. Jannuzi,
  • Michael Janssen,
  • Britton Jeter,
  • Wu Jiang,
  • Alejandra Jiménez-Rosales,
  • Michael D. Johnson,
  • Svetlana Jorstad,
  • Abhishek V. Joshi,
  • Taehyun Jung,
  • Mansour Karami,
  • Ramesh Karuppusamy,
  • Tomohisa Kawashima,
  • Garrett K. Keating,
  • Mark Kettenis,
  • Dong-Jin Kim,
  • Jae-Young Kim,
  • Jongsoo Kim,
  • Junhan Kim,
  • Motoki Kino,
  • Jun Yi Koay,
  • Prashant Kocherlakota,
  • Yutaro Kofuji,
  • Shoko Koyama,
  • Carsten Kramer,
  • Michael Kramer,
  • Thomas P. Krichbaum,
  • Cheng-Yu Kuo,
  • Noemi La Bella,
  • Tod R. Lauer,
  • Daeyoung Lee,
  • Sang-Sung Lee,
  • Po Kin Leung,
  • Aviad Levis,
  • Zhiyuan Li,
  • Rocco Lico,
  • Greg Lindahl,
  • Michael Lindqvist,
  • Mikhail Lisakov,
  • Jun Liu,
  • Kuo Liu,
  • Elisabetta Liuzzo,
  • Wen-Ping Lo,
  • Andrei P. Lobanov,
  • Laurent Loinard,
  • Colin J. Lonsdale,
  • Ru-Sen Lu,
  • Nicholas R. MacDonald,
  • Jirong Mao,
  • Nicola Marchili,
  • Sera Markoff,
  • Daniel P. Marrone,
  • Alan P. Marscher,
  • Iván Martí-Vidal,
  • Satoki Matsushita,
  • Lynn D. Matthews,
  • Lia Medeiros,
  • Karl M. Menten,
  • Daniel Michalik,
  • Izumi Mizuno,
  • Yosuke Mizuno,
  • James M. Moran,
  • Kotaro Moriyama,
  • Cornelia Müller,
  • Alejandro Mus,
  • Gibwa Musoke,
  • Ioannis Myserlis,
  • Andrew Nadolski,
  • Hiroshi Nagai,
  • Neil M. Nagar,
  • Masanori Nakamura,
  • Ramesh Narayan,
  • Gopal Narayanan,
  • Iniyan Natarajan,
  • Antonios Nathanail,
  • Santiago Navarro Fuentes,
  • Joey Neilsen,
  • Roberto Neri,
  • Chunchong Ni,
  • Aristeidis Noutsos,
  • Michael A. Nowak,
  • Junghwan Oh,
  • Hiroki Okino,
  • Héctor Olivares,
  • Gisela N. Ortiz-León,
  • Tomoaki Oyama,
  • Feryal Özel,
  • Daniel C. M. Palumbo,
  • Georgios Filippos Paraschos,
  • Jongho Park,
  • Harriet Parsons,
  • Nimesh Patel,
  • Ue-Li Pen,
  • Dominic W. Pesce,
  • Vincent Piétu,
  • Richard Plambeck,
  • Aleksandar PopStefanija,
  • Oliver Porth,
  • Felix M. Pötzl,
  • Jorge A. Preciado-López,
  • Dimitrios Psaltis,
  • Venkatessh Ramakrishnan,
  • Ramprasad Rao,
  • Mark G. Rawlings,
  • Alexander W. Raymond,
  • Luciano Rezzolla,
  • Angelo Ricarte,
  • Bart Ripperda,
  • Freek Roelofs,
  • Alan Rogers,
  • Eduardo Ros,
  • Cristina Romero-Cañizales,
  • Arash Roshanineshat,
  • Helge Rottmann,
  • Alan L. Roy,
  • Ignacio Ruiz,
  • Chet Ruszczyk,
  • Kazi L. J. Rygl,
  • Salvador Sánchez,
  • David Sánchez-Argüelles,
  • Miguel Sánchez-Portal,
  • Mahito Sasada,
  • Kaushik Satapathy,
  • Tuomas Savolainen,
  • F. Peter Schloerb,
  • Jonathan Schonfeld,
  • Karl-Friedrich Schuster,
  • Lijing Shao,
  • Zhiqiang Shen,
  • Des Small,
  • Bong Won Sohn,
  • Jason SooHoo,
  • Kamal Souccar,
  • He Sun,
  • Fumie Tazaki,
  • Alexandra J. Tetarenko,
  • Paul Tiede,
  • Remo P. J. Tilanus,
  • Michael Titus,
  • Pablo Torne,
  • Efthalia Traianou,
  • Tyler Trent,
  • Sascha Trippe,
  • Matthew Turk,
  • Ilse van Bemmel,
  • Huib Jan van Langevelde,
  • Daniel R. van Rossum,
  • Jesse Vos,
  • Jan Wagner,
  • Derek Ward-Thompson,
  • John Wardle,
  • Jonathan Weintroub,
  • Norbert Wex,
  • Robert Wharton,
  • Maciek Wielgus,
  • Kaj Wiik,
  • Gunther Witzel,
  • Michael F. Wondrak,
  • Qingwen Wu,
  • Paul Yamaguchi,
  • Aristomenis Yfantis,
  • Doosoo Yoon,
  • André Young,
  • Ken Young,
  • Wei Yu,
  • Feng Yuan,
  • Ye-Fei Yuan,
  • J. Anton Zensus,
  • Shuo Zhang,
  • Guang-Yao Zhao,
  • Shan-Shan Zhao,
  • The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acc586
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 950, no. 1
p. 35

Abstract

Read online

Interpretation of resolved polarized images of black holes by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) requires predictions of the polarized emission observable by an Earth-based instrument for a particular model of the black hole accretion system. Such predictions are generated by general relativistic radiative transfer (GRRT) codes, which integrate the equations of polarized radiative transfer in curved spacetime. A selection of ray-tracing GRRT codes used within the EHT Collaboration is evaluated for accuracy and consistency in producing a selection of test images, demonstrating that the various methods and implementations of radiative transfer calculations are highly consistent. When imaging an analytic accretion model, we find that all codes produce images similar within a pixel-wise normalized mean squared error (NMSE) of 0.012 in the worst case. When imaging a snapshot from a cell-based magnetohydrodynamic simulation, we find all test images to be similar within NMSEs of 0.02, 0.04, 0.04, and 0.12 in Stokes I , Q , U , and V , respectively. We additionally find the values of several image metrics relevant to published EHT results to be in agreement to much better precision than measurement uncertainties.

Keywords