Schwarzschild Geodesics in Terms of Elliptic Functions and the Related Red Shift

Abstract

Using Weierstrassian elliptic functions the exact geodesics in the Schwarzschild metric are expressed in a simple and most transparent form. The results are useful for analytical and numerical applications. For example we calculate the perihelion precession and the light deflection in the post-Einsteinian approximation. The bounded orbits are computed in the post-Newtonian order. As a topical application we calculate the gravitational red shift for a star moving in the Schwarzschild field.