Perturbative deflection angles of timelike rays

Abstract

Geodesics of both lightrays and timelike particles with nonzero mass are deflected in a gravitational field. In this work we apply the perturbative method developed in Ref. \cite{Jia:2020dap} to compute the deflection angle of both null and timelike rays in the weak field limit for four spacetimes. We obtained the deflection angles for the Bardeen spacetime to the eleventh order of $m/b$ where $m$ is the ADM mass and $b$ is the impact parameter, and for the Hayward, Janis-Newman-Winicour and Einstein-Born-Infeld spacetimes to the ninth, seventh and eleventh order respectively. The effect of the impact parameter $b$, velocity $v$ and spacetime parameters on the deflection angle are analyzed in each of the four spacetimes. It is found that in general, the perturbative deflection angle depends on and only on the asymptotic behavior of the metric functions, and in an order-correlated way. Moreover, it is shown that although these deflection angles are calculated in the large $b/m$ limit, their minimal valid $b$ can be as small as a few $m$'s as long as the order is high enough. At these impact parameters, the deflection angle itself is also found large. As velocity decreases, the deflection angle in all spacetime studied increases. For a given $b$, if the spacetime parameters allows a critical velocity $v_c$, then the perturbative deflection angle will deviate from its true value as $v$ decreases to $v_c$. It is also found that if the variation of spacetime parameters can only change the spacetime qualitatively at small but not large radius, then these spacetime parameter will not cause a qualitative change of the deflection angle, although its value is still quantitatively affected. The application and possible extension of the work are discussed.