Line of sight paraxial gravitational cloaking
arXiv:1710.10147 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.97.104008
Abstract
Three-dimensional gravitational cloaking is known to require exotic matter and energy sources, which makes it arguably physically unrealizable. On the other hand, typical astronomical observations are performed using one-dimensional paraxial line of sight geometries. We demonstrate that unidirectional line of sight gravitational cloaking does not require exotic matter, and it may occur in multiple natural astronomical scenarios which involve gravitational lensing. In particular, recently discovered double gravitational lens SDSSJ0946+1006 together with the Milky Way appear to form a natural paraxial cloak. A natural question to ask, then, is how much matter in the universe may be hidden from view by such natural gravitational cloaks. It is estimated that the total volume hidden from an observer by gravitational cloaking may reach about 1% of the total volume of the visible universe.
17 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D
References in corpus (7)
- General Relativity in Electrical Engineering
- The Sloan Lens ACS Survey. VI: Discovery and analysis of a double Einstein ring
- The Evolution of Galaxy Number Density at z < 8 and its Implications
- The Mass Profile of the Galaxy to 80 kpc
- Electromagnetic cloaking in the visible frequency range
- Paraxial ray optics cloaking
- The Milky Way Galaxy as a Strong Gravitational Lens