Work

Recursion relations for gravitational lensing

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: The weak gravitational lensing formalism can be extended to the strong lensing regime by integrating a nonlinear version of the geodesic deviation equation. The resulting ‘roulette’ expansion generalises the notion of convergence, shear and flexion to arbitrary order. The independent coefficients of this expansion are screen space gradients of the optical tidal tensor which approximates to the usual lensing potential in the weak field limit. From lensed images, knowledge of the roulette coefficients can in principle be inverted to reconstruct the mass distribution of a lens. In this paper, we simplify the roulette expansion and derive a family of recursion relations between the various coefficients, generalising the Kaiser–Squires relations beyond the weak-lensing regime.

Source: General Relativity and Gravitation

DOI: 10.1007/s10714-020-02677-z

Authors: Ben David Normann, Chris Clarkson

Institutions: University of Stavanger, University of Cape Town, Queen Mary University of London, University of the Western Cape

Language: English

Topic: Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,690

Funders: Universitetet i Stavanger, Science and Technology Facilities Council