English

Periapsis shift in the Zipoy-Voorhees spacetime

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2025-12-02 v3 Astrophysics of Galaxies

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 γ\gamma, including the Schwarzschild spacetime as γ=1\gamma = 1. 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 γ\gamma is constrained to γ1.9×102\gamma \gtrsim 1.9 \times 10^{-2} for the gravitational field of Sgr A*. This is equivalent to M~29.7×102\tilde{M}_2 \lesssim 9.7 \times 10^2 in terms of the dimensionless quadrupole moment M~2\tilde{M}_2, that is, the supermassive compact object at Sgr A* cannot be very prolate, whereas M~21/3\tilde{M}_2 \geq -1/3 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

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:48:08.492Z