Wave optical imaging of an oscillating electric dipole orbiting a black hole
Abstract
We study the electromagnetic radiation and wave-optical imaging of an oscillating electric dipole orbiting a Kerr black hole. We derive the effective 4-current associated with a pointlike oscillating electric dipole in curved spacetime, and use black hole perturbation theory to compute the resulting radiation field at future null infinity, from first principles. We then develop a wave-optical imaging framework for a moving electromagnetic source in curved spacetime. We obtain images of an orbiting electric dipole, displaying relativistic beaming, gravitational lensing, and Einstein rings. We study polarization-dependent scattering by comparing the images produced by spinning dipoles with opposite helicities, finding a displacement that roughly decreases with the inverse of the radiation frequency, as expected for a beyond-geometric-optics effect. Our results provide a first-principles benchmark for beyond-geometric-optics descriptions of electromagnetic radiation in Kerr spacetime.
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BibTeX
@misc{nazare2026wave,
title = {{Wave optical imaging of an oscillating electric dipole orbiting a black hole}},
author = {Filipe Nazaré and João S. Santos and Vitor Cardoso and José Natário},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.10689},
eprint = {2609.10689},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10689},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Wave optical imaging of an oscillating electric dipole orbiting a black hole
AU - Filipe Nazaré
AU - João S. Santos
AU - Vitor Cardoso
AU - José Natário
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.10689
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10689
AB - We study the electromagnetic radiation and wave-optical imaging of an oscillating electric dipole orbiting a Kerr black hole. We derive the effective 4-current associated with a pointlike oscillating electric dipole in curved spacetime, and use black hole perturbation theory to compute the resulting radiation field at future null infinity, from first principles. We then develop a wave-optical imaging framework for a moving electromagnetic source in curved spacetime. We obtain images of an orbiting electric dipole, displaying relativistic beaming, gravitational lensing, and Einstein rings. We study polarization-dependent scattering by comparing the images produced by spinning dipoles with opposite helicities, finding a displacement that roughly decreases with the inverse of the radiation frequency, as expected for a beyond-geometric-optics effect. Our results provide a first-principles benchmark for beyond-geometric-optics descriptions of electromagnetic radiation in Kerr spacetime.
ER -