Abstract:
In this paper the jet model for the supermassive black hole candidate Sgr A* in the Center of the Galaxy is reviewed. The most recent model, with a reduced set of parameters, is able to account for all major radio properties of the source: size, structure, flux density, and spectrum. The model requires a minimum jet power of ~1039 erg/sec and in a symbiotic jet/disk system implies a minimum accretion rate of a few times 10-8 Mo/yr for a radio loud jet or 10-5 Mo/yr for a radio quiet jet. Low near-infrared limits on the Sgr A* flux then imply that the accretion flow onto the central black hole must be radiatively deficient, but most likely has a high viscosity. Within the jet model the high-frequency part of the Sgr A* spectrum is self-consistently explained as the nozzle of the outflow. In a symbiotic model this innermost region of the jet could possibly be identified with the innermost region of an advection dominated accretion disk, a Bondi-Hoyle accretion flow, or any other type of underluminous accretion process. The compact nozzle region is of particular importance since it can be used as a background photon source against which the central black hole could be directly imaged with future mm-VLBI experiments.
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Questions: Heino Falcke, hfalcke@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de