A Fermat principle for stationary space-times and applications to light rays (Q1345105): Difference between revisions

The work presents an extension of Fermat principle in optics to Lorentzian product manifolds with conformally stationary metrics. The existence and multiplicity of null geodesic lines joining a given point to a timelike curve is studied. The Morse theory is used to relate the set of these geodesic lines to the topology of the space-time. As an example, the results are applied to Kerr space-time outside the stationary limit surface.