The black hole photon ring

In recent years, the Event Horizon Telescope has released the first close-up interferometric images of two supermassive black holes, M87* and SgrA*. It is believed that within these images is embedded a fine, yet-unresolved brightness enhancement known as the photon ring. The ring is a universal consequence of extreme gravitational lensing by the black hole and thereby conveys information on its spacetime geometry, potentially providing a new independent way to probe strong-field general relativistic effects at the horizon scale. In the talk I will review the theory of the photon ring and its corresponding spacetime region, the photon shell, which governs the universal lensing structure. I will then describe current efforts and future prospects for resolving the ring, which include both the construction of transformative new instruments and the development of novel analysis methods. Expanding on the latter, I will discuss how source variability may be harnessed to detect the ring by considering particular correlations of fluctuations in black hole images.