Continuous image distortion by astrophysical thick lenses

DOI10.1007/S10714-011-1181-YMaRDI QIDQ648118zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Thomas P. Kling, Louis Bianchini

Publication date 22 November 2011

Published in General Relativity and Gravitation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1104.1687

zbMATH Keywords

gravitational lensingimage distortionspin coefficient formalismweak lensing

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Equations of motion in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C10) Black holes (83C57) Spinor and twistor methods in general relativity and gravitational theory; Newman-Penrose formalism (83C60) Space-time singularities, cosmic censorship, etc. (83C75) Galactic and stellar dynamics (85A05) Radiative transfer in astronomy and astrophysics (85A25)

Abstract: Image distortion due to weak gravitational lensing is examined using a non-perturbative method of integrating the geodesic deviation and optical scalar equations along the null geodesics connecting the observer to a distant source. The method we develop continuously changes the shape of the pencil of rays from the source to the observer with no reference to lens planes in astrophysically relevant scenarios. We compare the projected area and the ratio of semi-major to semi-minor axes of the observed elliptical image shape for circular sources from the continuous, thick-lens method with the commonly assumed thin-lens approximation. We find that for truncated singular isothermal sphere and NFW models of realistic galaxy clusters, the commonly used thin-lens approximation is accurate to better than 1 part in 10^4 in predicting the image area and axes ratios. For asymmetric thick lenses consisting of two massive clusters separated along the line of sight in redshift up to Delta z = 0.2, we find that modeling the image distortion as two clusters in a single lens plane does not produce relative errors in image area or axes ratio more than 0.5%

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Cites work

• An Approach to Gravitational Radiation by a Method of Spin Coefficients
• General Relativity
• Gravitational lensing from a spacetime perspective
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4084477 (Why is no real title available?)

Cited in

(5)

• Angular diameter distances reconsidered in the Newman and Penrose formalism
• Roulettes: a weak lensing formalism for strong lensing. II: Derivation and analysis
• Analytic approach to perturbed Einstein ring with elliptical NFW lens model
• Perturbative approach to the gravitational lensing by a non-spherically distorted compact object
• Lensing and caustic effects on cosmological distances

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