Periapsis shift in the Zipoy-Voorhees spacetime
Abstract
We study the periapsis shift of timelike bound orbits in the equatorial plane in the Zipoy-Voorhees spacetime, which is an exact, static, axisymmetric, and vacuum solution characterized by the deformation parameter , including the Schwarzschild spacetime as . We newly derive the formula for the periapsis shift by the post-Newtonian (PN) expansion and show that the quadrupole moment contributes to the periapsis shift apparently as in the 2PN order. Applying this formula to observational data on S2, a star orbiting closely to Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), we show that the parameter is constrained to for the gravitational field of Sgr A*. This is equivalent to in terms of the dimensionless quadrupole moment , that is, the supermassive compact object at Sgr A* cannot be very prolate, whereas is required from the solution. Finally, we derive a new series representation in this spacetime using a recently proposed prescription, which shows fast convergence not only in the weak-field regime with not necessarily small eccentricity but also in the strong-field regime with small eccentricity.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.04280,
title = {Periapsis shift in the Zipoy-Voorhees spacetime},
author = {Akihito Katsumata and Tomohiro Harada},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.04280},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
44 pages, 8 figures, minor revision, figure and references added