Speed of gravity and gravitomagnetism

We analyzed the influence of static gravitational field on the vacuum and proposed the concept of inhomogeneous vacuum. According to the observational result of the light deflection in solar gravitational field as well as the corresponding Fermat's principle in the general relativity, we derived an analytical expression of the refractive index of vacuum in a static gravitational field. We found that the deviation of the vacuum refractive index is composed of two parts: one is...

The Lorentz covariant theory of propagation of light in the (weak) gravitational fields of N-body systems consisting of arbitrarily moving point-like bodies with constant masses is constructed. The theory is based on the Lienard-Wiechert presentation of the metric tensor. A new approach for integrating the equations of motion of light particles depending on the retarded time argument is applied. In an approximation which is linear with respect to the universal gravitational c...

In Newtonian gravity (NG) it is known that the gravitational field anywhere inside a spherically symmetric distribution of mass is determined only by the enclosed mass. This is also widely believed to be true in general relativity (GR), and the Birkhoff theorem is often invoked to support this analogy between NG and GR. Here we show that such an understanding of the Birkhoff theorem is incorrect and leads to erroneous calculations of light deflection and delay time through ma...

Since VLBI techniques give microarcsecond position accuracy of celestial objects, tests of GR using radio sources as probes of a gravitational field have been made. We present the results from two recent tests using the VLBA: In 2005, the measurement of the classical solar deflection; and in 2002, the measurement of the retarded gravitational deflection associated with Jupiter. The deflection experiment measured PPN-gamma to an accuracy of 0.0003; the Jupiter experiment measu...

By exploring the relationship between the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a gravitational field and the light propagation in a refractive medium, it is shown that, in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, the velocity of light will be smaller than its special relativity value. Then, restricting again to the domain of validity of geometrical optics, the same result is obtained in the context of wave optics. It is argued that this phenomenon and the anisotro...

Action at distance in Newtonian physics is replaced by finite propagation speeds in classical post--Newtonian physics. As a result, the differential equations of motion in Newtonian physics are replaced by functional differential equations, where the delay associated with the finite propagation speed is taken into account. Newtonian equations of motion, with post--Newtonian corrections, are often used to approximate the functional differential equations. In ``On the origin of...

Recently Van Flandern concluded from astrophysical data that gravity propagates faster than light. We demonstrate that the data can be explained by current theory that does not permit superluminal speeds. We explain the origin of apparently instantaneous connections, first within EM, and then within strong-field GR.

The paper contains a proposed experiment for testing the gravitomagnetic effect on the propagation of light around a rotating mass. The idea is to use a rotating spherical laboratory-scale shell, around which two mutually orthogonal lightguides are wound acting as the arms of an interferometer. Numerical estimates show that time of flight differences between the equatorial and polar guides could be in the order of $\sim 10^{-20}$ s, actually detectable with sensitivity perfec...

Non-static gravitational fields generally introduce frequency shifts when bending light. In this paper, I discuss the frequency shifts induced in the bending of light by moving masses. As examples, I treat the recently discovered high-velocity pulsar PSR 2224+65 and a typical Einstein ring.

The classical phenomenon of the redshift of light in a static gravitational potential, usually called the gravitational redshift, is described in the literature essentially in two ways: on the one hand the phenomenon is explained through the behaviour of clocks which run the faster the higher they are located in the potential, whereas the energy and frequency of the propagating photon do not change with height. The light thus appears to be redshifted relative to the frequency...