Counting Zeros of Harmonic Rational Functions and Its Application to Gravitational Lensing
Abstract
General Relativity gives that finitely many point masses between an observer and a light source create many images of the light source. Positions of these images are solutions of where is a rational function. We study the number of solutions to and where and are polynomials and rational functions, respectively. Upper and lower bounds were previously obtained by Khavinson-\'{S}wi\c{a}tek, Khavinson-Neumann, and Petters. Between these bounds, we show that any number of simple zeros allowed by the Argument Principle occurs and nothing else occurs, off of a proper real algebraic set. If describes an -point gravitational lens, we determine the possible numbers of generic images.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1206.2273,
title = {Counting Zeros of Harmonic Rational Functions and Its Application to Gravitational Lensing},
author = {Pavel M. Bleher and Youkow Homma and Lyndon L. Ji and Roland K. W. Roeder},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.2273},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
15 pages, 2 figures. To appear in International Mathematics Research Notices (IMRN)