English

Analytical Kerr black hole lensing in the weak deflection limit

Astrophysics 2009-11-11 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We present an analytical treatment of gravitational lensing by a Kerr black hole in the weak deflection limit. Lightlike geodesics are expanded as a Taylor series up to and including third-order terms in m/b and a/b, where m is the black hole mass, a the angular momentum and b the impact parameter of the light ray. Positions and magnifications of individual images are computed with a perturbative analysis. At this order, the degeneracy with the translated Schwarzschild lens is broken. The critical curve is still a circle displaced from the black hole position in the equatorial direction and the corresponding caustic is point-like. The degeneracy between the black hole spin and its inclination relative to the observer is broken through the angular coordinates of the perturbed images.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0609435,
  title  = {Analytical Kerr black hole lensing in the weak deflection limit},
  author = {M. Sereno and F. De Luca},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0609435},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages; minor changes to match the version in press on Phys. Rev. D