Geometric Approach to Circular Photon Orbits and Black Hole Shadows

Abstract: Circular photon orbit and black hole shadow are significantly important issues in physics and astronomy, and a number of breakthroughs have been witnessed in recent years. Conventionally, the stable and unstable circular photon orbits are obtained using the effective potential of test particles moving in black hole spacetime. In this work, a pure geometric approach is developed to calculate these circular photon orbits and black hole shadow radius. Furthermore, it can be proved that our geometric approach is completely equivalent to the conventional approach based on effective potentials of test particles.