Motion equations in a Kerr-Newman-de Sitter spacetime: some methods of integration and application to black holes shadowing in Scilab

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods for integrating geodesic equations in Kerr-Newman-de Sitter spacetime, compares their accuracy, and applies them to simulate black hole shadows using Scilab, including effects of the cosmological constant.

Contribution

It introduces and compares integration methods for geodesic equations in KNdS spacetime and develops a shadow simulation tool in Scilab with applications to astrophysical black holes.

Findings

Carter's equations are the most accurate integration method.

The elliptic function approach speeds up shadow calculations.

Cosmological constant influences black hole shadow and accretion disk appearance.

Abstract

In this paper, we recall some basic facts about the Kerr--Newman--(anti) de Sitter (KNdS) spacetime and review several formulations and integration methods for the geodesic equation of a test particle in such a spacetime. In particular, we introduce some basic general symplectic integrators in the Hamiltonian formalism and we re-derive the separated motion equations using Carter's method. After this theoretical background, we explain how to ray-trace a KNdS black hole, equipped with a thin accretion disk, using Scilab. We compare the accuracy and execution time of the previous methods, concluding that the Carter equations is the best one. Then, inspired by Hagihara, we apply Weierstrass' elliptic functions to the non-rotating case, yielding a fairly fast shadowing program for such a spacetime. We provide some illustrations of the code, including a depiction of the effects of the cosmological constant on shadows and accretion disk, as well as a simulation of M87*.