Authors Referees APS Members |
January 2008, to be published in Physical Review D15
Influence of the cosmological constant on gravitational lensing in small
systems
The cosmological constant $\L$ affects gravitational lensing phenomena. The contribution of $\L$ to the observable angular positions of multiple images and to their amplification and time delay is here computed through a study in the weak deflection limit of the equations of motion in the Schwarzschild-de Sitter metric. Due to $\L$ the unresolved images are slightly demagnified, the radius of the Einstein ring decreases and the time delay increases. The effect is however negligible for near lenses. In the case of null cosmological constant, we provide some updated results on lensing by a Schwarzschild black hole. © 2008 The American Physical Society.
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