Date of Award

8-31-2026

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Physics, Applied

First Advisor

Olga Goulko

Second Advisor

Prashant Kocherlakota

Third Advisor

Stephen Arnason

Abstract

Black holes provide a unique laboratory for testing general relativity in the strong-field regime through observations such as black hole images and gravitational wave signals. Comparing theoretical predictions with these observations requires accurate numerical models of photon trajectories. This thesis develops and validates a generalized ray-tracing framework for computing null geodesics in stationary, axisymmetric spacetimes. Unlike many existing ray-tracing methods, the framework does not rely on metric separability or analytic solutions, allowing it to be applied to both separable and non-separable spacetimes. The framework is validated by reproducing known Schwarzschild and Kerr results and is applied to a quasi-Kerr spacetime as an initial demonstration of its broader applicability. This work provides a flexible framework for studying photon trajectories in more general spacetimes and lays the foundation for future observational tests of gravity.

Comments

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