Analytical Kerr black hole lensing in the weak deflection limit
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.
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