Curvature(s) of a light wavefront in a weak gravitational field

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates how weak gravitational fields affect the curvature of a light wavefront evolving from flatness, using ray tracing in a post-Newtonian spacetime.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical method to analyze the curvature of light wavefronts in weak gravitational fields within a post-Newtonian framework.

Findings

Wavefront curvature is significantly affected by weak gravity.

Ray tracing effectively models light propagation in relativistic spacetime.

Results align with theoretical predictions of gravitational lensing effects.

Abstract

The geometry of a light wavefront evolving from a flat wavefront under the action of weak gravity field in the 3-space associated to a post-Newtonian relativistic spacetime, is studied numerically by means of the ray tracing method.