EHT Array Upgrades Sharpen View of M87* Jet Launch Zone, Bridging Horizon Scales to Galaxy-Scale Feedback

The 2026 arXiv preprint by La Bella et al. (abs/2606.05307) uses synthetic EHT visibilities from 2021, 2022, and near-future arrays to test semi-analytic jet-plus-accretion models, finding that the 2022 configuration's improved short baselines allow recovery of jet emission down to roughly 10-20% of the compact flux. Methodology relies on regularized maximum likelihood and Bayesian imaging of simulated data; no real observations are analyzed, and the models assume tunable jet intensity decoupled from the disk—limitations that leave open questions about self-consistent GRMHD coupling. This work extends the 2019 EHT M87* results (Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, ApJL 875:L1) by quantifying when faint jet bases become distinguishable from the photon ring, a threshold missed in early coverage that focused only on ring diameter. Cross-referencing with the 2024 EHT M87 polarization paper (ApJL 964:L1) reveals that ordered magnetic fields near the horizon could suppress or enhance jet detectability depending on Faraday depth, an accretion-physics link the preprint underplays. Collectively these observations tighten constraints on Blandford-Znajek launching radii to <5 rg, directly informing how M87*'s jet couples to kpc-scale lobes and quenches cooling flows in Virgo-cluster ellipticals. If future arrays detect no jet signature, the compact emission must be disk-dominated, revising estimates of jet power available for galaxy evolution.