Light Deflection in Perturbed Friedmann Universes

Abstract

In this letter a new formula for light deflection is derived using only physically observable concepts. The general result is specialized to cosmological perturbation theory and expressed in terms of gauge--invariant perturbation variables. The resulting scalar, vector and tensor equations are supplemented by simple examples for illustration. The gravity wave example may be of more than academic interest and even represent a new way to detect gravitational waves.