Paper 4, Section II, B
Part II, 2010
The Schwarzschild line element is given by
where and is the Schwarzschild radius. Obtain the equation of geodesic motion of photons moving in the equatorial plane, , in the form
where is proper time, and and are constants whose physical significance should be indicated briefly.
Defining show that light rays are determined by
where and may be taken to be small. Show that, to zeroth order in , a light ray is a straight line passing at distance from the origin. Show that, to first order in , the light ray is deflected through an angle . Comment briefly on some observational evidence for the result.