Numerical estimation of the curvature of a light wavefront in a weak gravitational field

Abstract

The geometry of a light wavefront evolving in the 3-space associated with a post-Newtonian relativistic spacetime from a flat wavefront is studied numerically by means of the ray tracing method. For a discretization of the bidimensional wavefront the surface fitting technique is used to determine the curvature of this surface at each vertex of the mesh. The relationship between the curvature of a wavefront and the change of the arrival time at different points on the Earth is also numerically discussed.

Curvature(s) of a Light Wavefront in a Weak Gravitational Field

“…In this work and in Ref. 2 with more detail, we study a discretized model of the wavefront surface by means of a regular triangulation for the study of the curvature(s) (mean and relative, see Ref.…”

Numerical treatment of the light propagation problem in the post-Newtonian formalism

“…We will establish a discretized model of the wavefront surface by means of a regular triangulation for the study of the curvature(s) of this surface. The main methods and results have been recently published in [2], in this work we will only expose a summary of them.…”