Analytical study of higher-order ring images of the accretion disk around a black hole

Abstract

Gravitational lensing of a light source by a black hole leads to the appearance of higher-order images produced by photons that loop around the black hole before reaching the observer. Higher-order images were widely investigated numerically and analytically, in particular using the so-called strong deflection limit of gravitational deflection. After recent observations of the black hole image, attention has been drawn to higher-order rings, which are lensed images of the accreting matter of the black hole environment and can appear near the boundary of the black hole shadow. In this article, we use the strong deflection limit technique to investigate higher-order ring images of the luminous accretion disk around a Schwarzschild black hole. We consider a thin disk given by the inner and outer radii and an observer located far from the black hole on the axis of symmetry. For this configuration, it becomes possible to find the angular radii, thicknesses, and solid angles of higher-order rings in the form of compact analytical expressions. We show that the size of the rings is mainly determined by the position of the inner boundary of the accretion disk, which makes it possible to use them to distinguish between different accretion models. Possible generalizations of our model to nonsymmetric images can help to make the estimation of black hole angular momentum. We also present the analytical estimation of fluxes from higher-order images. Our method makes it easy to investigate $n=2$ and $n=3$ higher-order rings, the possible observation of which in future projects is currently being discussed.