Spatial dispersion of light rays propagating through a plasma in Kerr space–time

2019/01/14 by Tom Kimpson, Kinwah Wu, Silvia Zane
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Computational physics #Dispersion (optics) #Dispersion relation #Gravitational wave #Optics #Physics #Plasma #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Spacetime #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stz138

9 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

openalex publication_date 2019/01/14 · arxiv created 2019/02/05 · arxiv updated 2019/02/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We investigate the propagation of light through a plasma on a background Kerr space–time via a Hamiltonian formulation. The behaviour of light when propagating through a vacuum and through a plasma is not the same; the convolution of gravitational and plasma effects gives rise to a dispersion in both space and time. The magnitude of the dispersion is a strong function of both the ray frequency and impact parameter. We discuss implications for the detection of gravitationally bent pulsar beams near the Galactic centre.

Citations

• ON DETECTING MILLISECOND PULSARS AT THE GALACTIC CENTER
• Spin and mass of the nearest supermassive black hole
• THE PROPER MOTION OF THE GALACTIC CENTER PULSAR RELATIVE TO SAGITTARIUS A*
• Identification of Cygnus X-1 with HDE 226868
• Cygnus X-1—a Spectroscopic Binary with a Heavy Companion ?
• STRONG FIELD EFFECTS ON PULSAR ARRIVAL TIMES: CIRCULAR ORBITS AND EQUATORIAL BEAMS
• Gravitational Field of a Spinning Mass as an Example of Algebraically Special Metrics
• Strong-field tests of gravity using pulsars and black holes
• Global Structure of the Kerr Family of Gravitational Fields
• Jets from black hole X-ray binaries: testing, refining and extending empirical models for the coupling to X-rays
• The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe
• Testing properties of the Galactic center black hole using stellar orbits
• The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
• Pulsar Acceleration Searches on the GPU for the Square Kilometre Array
• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes
• Revisiting the shadow of a black hole in the presence of a plasma