I Illuminating Black Hole Shadows with Dark Matter Annihilation

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TL;DR Summary
An interesting new aspect of EHT astronomy - DM
Pop Science Version: https://phys.org/news/2025-10-event-horizon-telescope-images-reveal.html

Abstract​

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has significantly advanced our ability to study black holes, achieving unprecedented spatial resolution and revealing horizon-scale structures. Notably, these observations feature a distinctive dark shadow—primarily arising from faint jet emissions—surrounded by a bright photon ring. Anticipated upgrades of the EHT promise substantial improvements in dynamic range, enabling deeper exploration of low-background regions, particularly the inner shadow defined by the lensed equatorial horizon. Our analysis shows that observations of these regions transform supermassive black holes into powerful probes for annihilating dark matter, which is expected to accumulate densely in their vicinity. By analyzing the black hole image morphology and performing electron-positron propagation calculations in realistic plasma backgrounds derived from general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we set stringent constraints on dark matter annihilation, requiring contributions below the astrophysical emission. These constraints, derived from both current EHT observations and projections for future upgraded arrays, exclude a substantial region of previously unexplored parameter space and remain robust against astrophysical uncertainties, including black hole spin and plasma temperature variations.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/yxqg-363n
 
Abstract The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has significantly advanced our ability to study black holes, achieving unprecedented spatial resolution and revealing horizon-scale structures. Notably, these observations feature a distinctive dark shadow—primarily arising from faint jet emissions—surrounded by a bright photon ring. Anticipated upgrades of the EHT promise substantial improvements in dynamic range, enabling deeper exploration of low-background regions, particularly the inner shadow...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recombination_(cosmology) Was a matter density right after the decoupling low enough to consider the vacuum as the actual vacuum, and not the medium through which the light propagates with the speed lower than ##({\epsilon_0\mu_0})^{-1/2}##? I'm asking this in context of the calculation of the observable universe radius, where the time integral of the inverse of the scale factor is multiplied by the constant speed of light ##c##.
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