A Relativistic Ray Tracing Code for Visualizing and Studying Curved Space-Time*

General relativity is a notoriously difficult topic for undergraduates in physics to approach. We seek to remedy this by presenting an open-source code to model light ray transport in the Schwarzschild metric and their intersections with masses.

This provides a visualization that makes general relativity more intuitive and accessible to undergraduate students, providing a framework for computational experimentation in general relativity. It also provides a starting point for further investigation into more general space-time metrics.

This code was originally being used to explore neutron star micro-lensing of stellar fields with prospects in training AI to recognize neutron stars in real images utilizing model images for a training set under the supervision of Kathryn Z. Hadley. In addition, prospects first proposed by Jeffrey Hazboun of using the code to measure the relationship between the mass of a neutron star in an eclipsing binary system and the bending of light of the partner star are also being explored.