English

The Null Geodesics of the Kerr Exterior

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2020-07-21 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

The null geodesic equation in the Kerr spacetime can be expressed as a set of integral equations involving certain potentials. We classify the roots of these potentials and express the integrals in manifestly real Legendre elliptic form. We then solve the equations using Jacobi elliptic functions, providing the complete set of null geodesics of the Kerr exterior as explicit parameterized curves.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.12881,
  title  = {The Null Geodesics of the Kerr Exterior},
  author = {Samuel E. Gralla and Alexandru Lupsasca},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.12881},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

24 pages, 4 figures. v2: minor edits, matches published version. v3: corrected errors found after publication