Affine linking number estimates for the number of times an observer sees a star

Abstract

Affine linking numbers are the generalization of linking numbers to the case of nonzero homologous linked submanifolds. They were introduced by Rudyak and the first author who used them to study causality in globally hyperbolic spacetimes. In this paper we use affine linking numbers to estimate the number of times an observer sees light from a star, that is how many copies of the star do they see on the sky due to gravitational lensing.