Time Delay in Black Hole Gravitational Lensing as a Distance Estimator

Preprint

23 September 2003

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.gr-qc/0305007

Abstract

We calculate the time delay between different relativistic images formed by black hole gravitational lensing in the strong field limit. For spherically symmetric black holes, it turns out that the time delay between the first two images is proportional to the minimum impact angle. Their ratio gives a very interesting and precise measure of the distance of the black hole. Moreover, using also the separation between the images and their luminosity ratio, it is possible to extract the mass of the black hole. The time delay for the black hole at the center of our Galaxy is just few minutes, but for supermassive black holes with M=10^8 - 10^9 solar masses in the neighbourhood of the Local Group the time delay amounts to few days, thus being measurable with a good accuracy.

Keywords

All Related Versions

Version 1, 2003-05-02, ArXiv
Version 2, 2003-09-23, ArXiv
Published version: General Relativity and Gravitation, 36 (2), 435.

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