# Orbital Polarimetric Tomography of a Flare Near the Sagittarius A* Supermassive Black Hole

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07687 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07687/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Neural Tangent Kernel: Convergence and Generalization in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07572/) (2018)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [Gravitationally Lensed Black Hole Emission Tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03715/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Revealing the 3D Cosmic Web through Gravitationally Constrained Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15262/) (2025)
- [NeST: Neural Stress Tensor Tomography by leveraging 3D Photoelasticity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10212/) (2024)
- [Shaping AI's Impact on Billions of Lives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02730/) (2024)
- [Dynamic Black-hole Emission Tomography with Physics-informed Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08029/) (2026)
- [Revealing Fine Structure in Protoplanetary Disks with Physics Constrained Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.03623/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The interaction between the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, and its accretion disk occasionally produces high-energy flares seen in X-ray, infrared, and radio. One proposed mechanism that produces flares is the formation of compact, bright regions that appear within the accretion disk and close to the event horizon. Understanding these flares provides a window into accretion processes. Although sophisticated simulations predict the formation of these flares, their structure has yet to be recovered by observations. Here we show the first three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of an emission flare recovered from ALMA light curves observed on April 11, 2017. Our recovery shows compact, bright regions at a distance of roughly six times the event horizon. Moreover, it suggests a clockwise rotation in a low-inclination orbital plane, consistent with prior studies by GRAVITY and EHT. To recover this emission structure, we solve an ill-posed tomography problem by integrating a neural 3D representation with a gravitational model for black holes. Although the recovery is subject to, and sometimes sensitive to, the model assumptions, under physically motivated choices, our results are stable, and our approach is successful on simulated data.