Analytical Study of Deflection Angle and Time Delay in Kerr Spacetime with Modified Propagation

Abstract

We investigate gravitational lensing in Kerr spacetime in the presence of a modified photon propagation law arising from higher-curvature effective field theory corrections. Adopting a deformed dispersion relation, we analytically derive the deflection angle and the propagation time delay for null trajectories in a rotating background. We show that the modified propagation leads to explicit and calculable deviations from the standard Kerr predictions, affecting both the bending angle and the time delay. These corrections exhibit a nontrivial dependence on the black hole spin and are expected to become more relevant in the strong-field regime. In particular, near the photon region-where the spin-dependent geometry influences photon trajectories-such effects may play a role in shaping observable propagation features. Our results establish a concrete and systematic framework to quantify deviations from standard photon propagation in gravitational lensing. They further indicate that observables such as relativistic image separations and time delays provide a potential avenue to probe ultraviolet corrections to gravity in strong-field environments.