Deviations from Kerr: Polar critical curves and photon rings in a class of separable spacetimes

Abstract

Black-hole critical curves and photon rings provide complementary probes of strong-field geometry, motivating a unified analytic description of these observables beyond Kerr and a direct comparison with the Kerr predictions. We develop such a description for polar observers in a radial class of stationary, axisymmetric spacetimes with separable null geodesics. The spacetime dependence is organized through natural optical combinations selected by the null dynamics and a Kerr-relative representation suited to weak deviations from Kerr. We derive compact exact expressions for the polar critical radius, Lyapunov exponent, time delay, and rotation parameter, together with general first-order formulas that can be applied once the deformation functions of a specific metric are supplied. The weak-deviation analysis shows that the combined polar observables probe only a finite set of local deformation values and radial derivatives at the critical orbit, rather than the full radial profiles.