Cited by 81Astrophysical Phenomena and ObservationsPulsars and Gravitational Waves ResearchGalaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena

THEMIS: A Parameter Estimation Framework for the Event Horizon Telescope

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Broderick, Avery E., Gold, Roman, Karami, Mansour, Preciado-López, Jorge A., Tiede, Paul, Pu, Hung-Yi, Akiyama, Kazunori, Alberdi, Antxon +186 more·2020·The Astrophysical Journal

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) provides the unprecedented ability to directly resolve the structure and dynamics of black hole emission regions on scales smaller than their horizons. This has the potential to critically probe the mechanisms by which black holes accrete and launch outflows, and the structure of supermassive black hole spacetimes. However, accessing this information is a formidable analysis challenge for two reasons. First, the EHT natively produces a variety of data types that encode information about the image structure in nontrivial ways; these are subject to a variety of systematic effects associated with very long baseline interferometry and are supplemented by a wide variety of auxiliary data on the primary EHT targets from decades of other observations. Second, models of the emission regions and their interaction with the black hole are complex, highly uncertain, and computationally expensive to construct. As a result, the scientific utilization of EHT observations requires a flexible, extensible, and powerful analysis framework. We present such a framework, Themis , which defines a set of interfaces between models, data, and sampling algorithms that facilitates future development. We describe the design and currently existing components of Themis , how Themis has been validated thus far, and present additional analyses made possible by Themis that illustrate its capabilities. Importantly, we demonstrate that Themis is able to reproduce prior EHT analyses, extend these, and do so in a computationally efficient manner that can efficiently exploit modern high-performance computing facilities. Themis has already been used extensively in the scientific analysis and interpretation of the first EHT observations of M87.

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Crossref · 10.3847/1538-4357/ab91a4

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  • Visibility amplitudes are distributed according to a Rice distribution, which in the high signal-to-noise ratio limit becomes Gaussian.

    “For each snapshot and baseline, the visibility amplitudes are distributed according to a Rice distribution, which in the high signal-to-noise ratio limit becomes Gaussian ( e.g., Wardle & Kronberg 1974; Broderick et al. 2020a ) .”

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Authors
Broderick, A. E., Gold, R., Karami, M., Preciado-López, J. A., Tiede, P., Pu, H.-Y., Akiyama, K., Alberdi, A., Alef, W., Asada, K., Azulay, R., Baczko, A.-K., Baloković, M., Barrett, J., Bintley, D., Blackburn, L., Boland, W., Bouman, K. L., Bower, G. C., Bremer, M., Brinkerink, C. D., Brissenden, R., Britzen, S., Broguiere, D., Bronzwaer, T., Byun, D.-Y., Carlstrom, J. E., Chael, A., Chatterjee, S., Chatterjee, K., Chen, M.-T., Chen 陈永, Y. 军., Cho, I., Conway, J. E., Cordes, J. M., Crew, G. B., Cui, Y., Davelaar, J., De Laurentis, M., Deane, R., Dempsey, J., Desvignes, G., Doeleman, S. S., Eatough, R. P., Falcke, H., Fish, V. L., Fomalont, E., Fraga-Encinas, R., Friberg, P., Fromm, C. M., Galison, P., Gammie, C. F., García, R., Gentaz, O., Georgiev, B., Goddi, C., Gómez, J. L., Gu 顾敏, M. 峰., Gurwell, M., Hada, K., Hecht, M. H., Hesper, R., Ho 何子, L. C. 山., Ho, P., Honma, M., Huang, C.-W. L., Huang 黄, L. 磊., Hughes, D. H., Inoue, M., Issaoun, S., James, D. J., Janssen, M., Jeter, B., Jiang 江, W. 悟., Jiménez-Rosales, A., Johnson, M. D., Jorstad, S., Jung, T., Karuppusamy, R., Kawashima, T., Keating, G. K., Kettenis, M., Kim, J.-Y., Kim, J., Kino, M., Koay, J. Y., Koch, P. M., Koyama, S., Kramer, M., Kramer, C., Krichbaum, T. P., Kuo, C.-Y., Lee, S.-S., Li 李彦, Y.-R. 荣., Li 李志, Z. 远., Lindqvist, M., Lico, R., Liu, K., Liuzzo, E., Lo, W.-P., Lobanov, A. P., Loinard, L., Lonsdale, C., Lu 路如, R.-S. 森., MacDonald, N. R., Mao 毛基, J. 荣., Marscher, A. P., Martí-Vidal, I., Matsushita, S., Matthews, L. D., Menten, K. M., Mizuno, Y., Mizuno, I., Moran, J. M., Moriyama, K., Moscibrodzka, M., Müller, C., Nagai, H., Nagar, N. M., Nakamura, M., Narayan, R., Narayanan, G., Natarajan, I., Neri, R., Ni, C., Noutsos, A., Okino, H., Olivares, H., Ortiz-León, G. N., Oyama, T., Palumbo, D. C. M., Park, J., Pen, U.-L., Pesce, D. W., Piétu, V., Plambeck, R., PopStefanija, A., Porth, O., Prather, B., Ramakrishnan, V., Rao, R., Rawlings, M. G., Raymond, A. W., Rezzolla, L., Ripperda, B., Roelofs, F., Rogers, A., Ros, E., Rose, M., Rottmann, H., Ruszczyk, C., Ryan, B. R., Rygl, K. L. J., Sánchez, S., Sánchez-Arguelles, D., Sasada, M., Savolainen, T., Schloerb, F. P., Schuster, K.-F., Shao, L., Shen 沈志, Z. 强., Small, D., Sohn, B. W., SooHoo, J., Tazaki, F., Tilanus, R. P. J., Titus, M., Toma, K., Torne, P., Traianou, E., Trippe, S., Tsuda, S., van Bemmel, I., van Langevelde, H. J., van Rossum, D. R., Wagner, J., Wardle, J., Weintroub, J., Wex, N., Wharton, R., Wielgus, M., Wong, G. N., Wu 吴庆, Q. 文., Yoon, D., Young, A., Young, K., Younsi, Z., Yuan 袁, F. 峰., Yuan 袁业, Y.-F. 飞., Zensus, J. A., Zhao, G., Zhao, S.-S., Zhu, Z., & The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Affiliations
  • University of Waterloo (CA)
  • Goethe University Frankfurt (DE)
  • Perimeter Institute (CA)
  • Harvard University (US)
  • Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (ES)
  • Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (DE)
  • Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (TW)
  • Universitat de València (ES)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
  • East Asian Observatory (US)
  • Nederlandse Onderzoekschool Voor Astronomie (NL)
  • California Institute of Technology (US)
  • Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique (FR)
  • Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
  • Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KR)
  • University of Chicago (US)
  • Cornell University (US)
  • University of Amsterdam (NL)
  • Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
  • The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI (JP)
  • Rhodes University (ZA)
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
  • Leiden University (NL)
  • Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian (US)
  • University of Groningen (NL)
  • National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (MX)
  • Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (DE)
  • Boston University (US)
  • National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (JP)
  • Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (NL)
  • Kogakuin University (JP)
  • National Sun Yat-sen University (TW)
  • Istituto di Radioastronomia di Bologna (IT)
  • Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX)
  • University of Concepción (CL)
  • University of Massachusetts Amherst (US)
  • Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CA)
  • University of California, Berkeley (US)
  • University of Arizona (US)
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory (US)
  • Instituto de Radioastronomía Milimétrica (ES)
  • Hiroshima University (JP)
  • Peking University (CN)
  • Yonsei University (KR)
  • Tohoku University (JP)
  • Seoul National University (KR)
  • Brandeis University (US)
Corresponding author
Broderick, Avery E.
ORCID
Venue
The Astrophysical Journal
Published
2020-07-01
Volume
897
Issue
2
Pages
139
ISSN
  • 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
  • 1538-4357
OpenAlex
W3041989541
Cited by
81
References
147
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 6
FWCI
5.57
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • The Astrophysical Journal (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • UA Campus Repository (The University of Arizona) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Leiden Repository (Leiden University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Aaltodoc (Aalto University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
  • OpenBU (Boston University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
  • UpSpace Institutional Repository (University of Pretoria) (submittedVersion)
  • Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation (1207704, 11633006, 1144085, SEV-2017-0709, 1265383, 1140030, 1743442, 1440254, 18KK0090, 1248097, 1310896, 1715061, ACI-1 548 562, 0096454, 0705062, 11573051, 1548562, 0905844, 1207730, 1337663, 11721303, JP18K13594, 0521233, 1615796, 1743747, TG-AST080026N, 1228509, 0735191, 0922984, 11650110427, AFB-170002, 10625314, 89233218CNA000001, 610058, 1126433, 11725312, 1816420, AST-1555365, ACT172033, 0352953, 1716327, 1207752)
  • U.S. Department of Energy (#89233218CNA000001, 1548562, Contract 89233218CNA000001, ACI-1548562)
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration (89233218CNA000001, AST-1816420, ACI-1548562, OISE-1743747, 2016YFA0400702, 80NSSC17K0649)
  • John Templeton Foundation (OISE-1743747)
  • Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF5278, AST-1440254, GBMF3561)
  • Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (SEV-2017-0709, PGC 2018, AYA2016-80889-P, PGC2018-098915-B-C21)
  • National Radio Astronomy Observatory
  • International Max Planck Research School for Environmental, Cellular and Molecular Microbiology
  • Government of Canada
  • Leverhulme Trust
  • European Commission (HORIZON2020, 610058, SEV-2017-0709, 730562, 275201)
  • National Research Foundation (NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, NRF-2015H1A2A1033752)
  • Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India
  • Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (JP18K13594, 25120007, 18H01245, AST-1440254, JP17J08829)
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (ACI-1548562, 11650110427, 31140007, (11721303, 11633006, 11573051, 11725312, 2016YFA0400704, 18KK0090, 2016YFA0400702)
  • Academia Sinica
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, 2016YFA0400702, 18KK0090, QYZDJ-SSW-SYS008, 11721303)
  • Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (279006, 104497, 281692, 275201)
  • Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (639.043.513)
  • Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (SEV-2017-0709, AYA2016–80889–P, PGC2018)
  • Generalitat Valenciana (APOSTD/2018, APOSTD/2018/177)
  • Nuclear Safety and Security Commission
  • National Research Foundation of Korea (2015H1D3A1066561, 2015R1D1A1A01056807, NRF-2015H1D3A1066561, NRF-2015H1A2A1033752, ACI-1548562, 2015H1A2A1033752)
  • Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
  • Vetenskapsrådet (2017-00648)
  • China Scholarship Council (2016YFA0400702)
  • Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST106-2112-M001-011, MOST107-2119-M001-017, MOST106-2119-M001-027, MOST107-2119-M110-005, MOST107-2119-M001-020)
  • Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IN112417, SEV-2017-0709)
  • Russian Science Foundation (89233218CNA000001, 17-12-01029, OISE-1743747, AST-1816420)
  • Recruitment Program of Global Experts
  • Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
  • Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV‐2017‐0709)
  • Institut Périmètre de physique théorique
  • Toray Science Foundation
  • National Nuclear Security Administration (89233218C-NA000001)
  • Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
  • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (17J08829, AST-1440254, 610058, 89233218CNA000001, 18H03721, 1548562, 18KK0090, 18K03656, 18K03709, 275201, 18K13594, 25120007, 18H01245)
  • Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (PIA ACT172033, ACT172033, 170002, AFB-170002)
  • Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IN112417)
  • National Institutes of Natural Sciences
  • National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0400704, 2016YFA0400702)
  • Office of International Science and Engineering (17-43747)
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory (89233218CNA 000001, Contract 89233218CNA000001)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
Keywords
Event Horizon Telescope, THEMIS, parameter estimation, black hole imaging, supermassive black holes, black hole accretion, very long baseline interferometry, systematic effects, M87, high-performance computing

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