Equatorial light bending around Kerr-Newman black holes

Abstract

We study the deflection angle of a light ray as it traverses on the equatorial plane of a charged spinning black hole. We provide detailed analysis of the light ray's trajectory, and derive the closed-form expression of the deflection angle due to the black hole in terms of elliptic integrals. In particular, the geodesic equation of the light ray along the radial direction can be used to define an appropriate ``effective potential". The nonzero charge of the black hole shows stronger repulsive effects to prevent light rays from falling into the black hole as compared with the Kerr case. As a result, the radius of the innermost circular motion of light rays with the critical impact parameter decreases as charge $Q$ of the black hole increases for both direct and retrograde motions. Additionally, the deflection angle decreases when $Q$ increases with the fixed impact parameter. These results will have a direct consequence on constructing the apparent shape of a rotating charged black hole.