Resurgence and Hyperasymptotics in Wave Optics Astronomy

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Feldbrugge, Job, Crew, Samuel, Pen, Ue-Li
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866915815626899456
author Feldbrugge, Job
Crew, Samuel
Pen, Ue-Li
author_facet Feldbrugge, Job
Crew, Samuel
Pen, Ue-Li
contents With the discovery of gravitational waves and fast radio bursts, wave optics has become increasingly relevant in astrophysics. This paper studies the behaviour of random gravitational and plasma lenses, presenting the refractive and diffractive expansions, with higher-order terms that allow error estimates and embody the counterintuitive resurgence phenomenon. Specifically, we show that the diffractive expansion converges for a broad class of bounded lens models and provides an efficient description of interference patterns across frequency regimes. Next, building on Picard-Lefschetz techniques, we derive the full refractive expansion to arbitrary order, organising it into a transseries. Near caustics, the standard transseries is supplemented with uniform asymptotics. We study this transseries, with both Borel and hyperasymptotic resummation yielding systematic approximations to lensing integrals at all frequencies. Our results give a framework for modelling wave optics lensing near caustics and beyond the geometric optics approximation and thereby illustrate how tools from resurgence and asymptotic analysis can be applied to practical problems in astrophysics. Near caustic singularities, the post-refractive corrections diverge, while the uniform asymptotic expansion becomes accurate. We use the leading uniform approximation to derive the strong wave optics suppression of off-axis caustics, which clarifies their subdominant role.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_21493
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Resurgence and Hyperasymptotics in Wave Optics Astronomy
Feldbrugge, Job
Crew, Samuel
Pen, Ue-Li
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Mathematical Physics
With the discovery of gravitational waves and fast radio bursts, wave optics has become increasingly relevant in astrophysics. This paper studies the behaviour of random gravitational and plasma lenses, presenting the refractive and diffractive expansions, with higher-order terms that allow error estimates and embody the counterintuitive resurgence phenomenon. Specifically, we show that the diffractive expansion converges for a broad class of bounded lens models and provides an efficient description of interference patterns across frequency regimes. Next, building on Picard-Lefschetz techniques, we derive the full refractive expansion to arbitrary order, organising it into a transseries. Near caustics, the standard transseries is supplemented with uniform asymptotics. We study this transseries, with both Borel and hyperasymptotic resummation yielding systematic approximations to lensing integrals at all frequencies. Our results give a framework for modelling wave optics lensing near caustics and beyond the geometric optics approximation and thereby illustrate how tools from resurgence and asymptotic analysis can be applied to practical problems in astrophysics. Near caustic singularities, the post-refractive corrections diverge, while the uniform asymptotic expansion becomes accurate. We use the leading uniform approximation to derive the strong wave optics suppression of off-axis caustics, which clarifies their subdominant role.
title Resurgence and Hyperasymptotics in Wave Optics Astronomy
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21493