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

Abstract

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