Gravitational lensing in a warm plasma

Analytical studies of light bending in a dispersive medium near compact objects, e.g., black holes or neutron stars, are most challenged by a suitable definition of the medium. The most realistic model would be a hot magnetized plasma. In such a medium, however, an analytical description of light rays is very difficult. Therefore, usually an isotropic dispersive medium is assumed in analytical calculations. While it is possible to formulate equations for a general refractive index, which some studies do, most attention in the literature is given to the particular case of a cold, non-magnetized electron-ion plasma. Whereas this model covers many astrophysically relevant situations, there are indications that in some cases the plasma temperature is so high that the approximation of a cold plasma is no longer valid. For this reason, we consider in this paper a warm, non-magnetized electron-ion plasma, where the temperature is not set equal to zero but assumed to be small enough, such that relevant equations can be linearized with respect to it. After discussing the general equations for light rays in such a medium on a general-relativistic spacetime, we specify to the axially symmetric and stationary case which includes the spherically symmetric and static case. In particular, we calculate the influence of a warm plasma on the bending angle. In the spherically symmetric and static case, we also calculate the shadow in a warm plasma. We illustrate the general results with a static (respectively corotating) and an infalling warm plasma on Schwarzschild and Kerr spacetimes.

💡 Research Summary

This paper extends the Synge formalism for light propagation in an isotropic dispersive medium to the case of a warm, non‑magnetized electron‑ion plasma on a general‑relativistic background. The authors start by recalling the Hamiltonian description of geometric optics in a medium with refractive index (n(x^\alpha,\omega)) and four‑velocity (V^\alpha). For a cold plasma the index is simply (n^2=1-\omega_p^2/\omega^2). In a warm plasma the temperature introduces a dimensionless parameter (\chi=k_{\rm B}T/(m c^2)). By linearising with respect to (\chi) they obtain the widely used “fractional” form

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