Speaker
Description
General relativity predicts the deflection of light by the gravitational field of massive bodies. This deflection can result in the distortion and magnification of images of distant celestial objects, which is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. In the work presented here, acrylic disks are machined into lenses with a curvature that deflects light in much the same way as a gravitational lens. This emulated gravitational lensing results in images of Einstein rings and arcs as in strong gravitational lensing, tangential shear of background images as in weak gravitational lensing, and simulates the increased brightness of a background object as in gravitational microlensing. The emulated mass of the lens is determined from the lensed images in each gravitational lensing regime. These mass measurements agree with each other and with the expected emulated mass based on the machined curvature of the lens. Systematic effects are studied and results are compared using various distance scales and lenses.
| Keyword-1 | general relativity |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | gravitational lensing |
| Keyword-3 | undergraduate labs |