Gravitational lens on a static optical constant-curvature background: Its application to Weyl gravity model

Abstract: This paper extends the de-Sitter/anti-de Sitter (dS/AdS) background method based on the optical metric for gravitational lens [Phys. Rev. D 105, 084022 (2022)] to a static optical constant-curvature (SOCC) background. It is shown that the exact lens equation on the SOCC background can be written in the same form as that for either Minkowski, dS or AdS background in terms of flat, spherical or hyperbolic trigonometry, depending on the Gaussian curvature of the equatorial plane in the SOCC background. To exemplify the SOCC method, we consider the gravitational lens in Mannheim-Kazanas (MK) solution of Weyl gravity, which includes Rindler and de Sitter terms. In the zero mass limit, the deflection angle of light for the MK solution in the literature diverges to infinity. This is because there is a self-contradiction in their perturbative approximations of the MK metric and the orbit equation. The SOCC method incorporates the long-distance curvature effect into the background. Thereby the SOCC expression for the deflection angle of light in the MK solution is finite also in the zero mass limit.