On aberration in gravitational lensing

TL;DR

This paper derives a lens equation accounting for relativistic transverse and radial motions of the deflector, revealing how such motions distort lensing images and affect observables like Einstein rings and caustics.

Contribution

It introduces a new lens equation incorporating relativistic aberration effects due to deflector motion, extending previous static models.

Findings

Transverse motion displaces and distorts images on the celestial sphere.

Radial velocity causes an effective rescaling of the lens mass.

Earth's orbital motion can produce microarcsecond corrections in galactic center lensing.

Abstract

It is known that a relative translational motion between the deflector and the observer affects gravitational lensing. In this paper, a lens equation is obtained to describe such effects on actual lensing observables. Results can be easily interpreted in terms of aberration of light-rays. Both radial and transverse motions with relativistic velocities are considered. The lens equation is derived by first considering geodesic motion of photons in the rest-frame Schwarzschild spacetime of the lens, and, then, light-ray detection in the moving observer's frame. Due to the transverse motion images are displaced and distorted in the observer's celestial sphere, whereas the radial velocity along the line of sight causes an effective re-scaling of the lens mass. The Einstein ring is distorted to an ellipse whereas the caustics in the source plane are still point-like. Either for null transverse motion or up to linear order in velocities, the critical curve is still a circle with its radius corrected by a factor (1+z_d) with respect to the static case, z_d being the relativistic Doppler shift of the deflector. From the observational point of view, the orbital motion of the Earth can cause potentially observable corrections of the order of the microarcsec in lensing towards the super-massive black hole at the Galactic center. On a cosmological scale, tangential peculiar velocities of cluster of galaxies bring about a typical flexion in images of background galaxies in the weak lensing regime but future measurements seem to be too much challenging.