written by Wolfgang Christian, Mario Belloni, and Anne Cox
educational validator: Bethany Zach

The GR Schwarzschild Light program simulates the path of light around a black hole using the Schwarzschild metric.  It also displays a plot of the effective potential of light in the vicinity of a black hole. The default setting is a light trajectory that escapes the black hole.

GR Schwarzschild Light is part of a suite of Open Source Physics programs that model aspects of General Relativity.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the gr_schwarzschild_light.jar file will run the program if Java is installed. Other programs provide additional visualizations.  They can be found by searching ComPADRE for Open Source Physics, OSP, or General Relativity.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light.jar - 613kb Java Archive File

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

This file has previous versions.

A pdf document that briefly describes the GR Schwarzschild Light program. It describes how to use the gr_schwarzschild_light.jar file and contains short tutorial exercises for use with the gr_schwarzschild_light.jar file.

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light.pdf - 98kb Adobe PDF Document

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

The materials distributed in this zip file are in support of the GR Schwarzschild Light program. This distribution contains the GR Schwarzschild Light program, documentation and exercises, and additional parameter sets (xml files)

• Download gr_schwarzschild_light_distribution.zip - 633kb Compressed File

Published May 23, 2008
Last Modified May 23, 2008

This file has previous versions.