Light deflection in binary stars

TL;DR

This paper investigates the gravitational light deflection in binary star systems, assessing its potential detectability with future high-precision astrometry, and finds that only extremely rare binaries could exhibit observable effects.

Contribution

It introduces criteria to identify binary systems with potentially detectable light deflection effects due to relativistic gravity.

Findings

Approximately 1000 binaries could have deflections ≥1 microarcsecond.

Detectable deflections require extreme orbital parameters.

Such extreme binaries are very rare and unlikely to be observed now.

Abstract

The light deflection of one component of a binary system due to the gravitational field of the other component is investigated. While this relativistic effect has not been observed thus far, the question arises that whether this effect becomes detectable in view of todays high-precision astrometry which soon will reach the microarcsecond level of accuracy. The effect is studied and its observability is investigated. It turns out, that in total there are about 1000 binaries having orbital parameters such that the light deflection amounts to be at least 1 microarcsecond. Two stringent criteria for the orbital parameters are presented, by means of which one can easily determine the maximal value of light deflection effect for a given binary system. It is found, that for relevant binaries their orbital parameters must take rather extreme values in order to have a light deflection of the order of a few microarcseconds. Only in a very few and rather extreme binary systems the light deflection effect might be detectable by todays astrometry, but their existence is highly improbable. Thus, the detection of this subtle effect of relativity still remains a challenge for future astrometric missions.