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Light trajectories and optical appearances in asymptotically anti–de Sitter–Schwarzschild and black string spacetimes

G. Alencar ^1,*, A. Lima ^1,†, Diego Rubiera-Garcia^2,‡, and Diego Sáez-Chillón Gómez ^3,1,§

¹Department of Physics, Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), Campus do Pici, Fortaleza - CE, C.P. 6030, 60455-760 - Brazil
²Departamento de Física Teórica and IPARCOS, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
³Department of Theoretical, Atomic and Optical Physics, and Laboratory for Disruptive Interdisciplinary Science (LaDIS), Campus Miguel Delibes, University of Valladolid UVA, Paseo Belén, 7, 47011 Valladolid, Spain

^*Contact author: geova@fisica.ufc.br
^†Contact author: arthur.lima@fisica.ufc.br
^‡Contact author: drubiera@ucm.es
^§Contact author: diego.saez@uva.es

Phys. Rev. D 114, 044074 – Published 24 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/33zp-jkmy

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) imaging of the central objects in the M87 and Milky Way galaxies provides compelling evidence that these objects are consistent with (Kerr) black holes. In view of these observations and the future expectations of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) on which the EHT observations are based, an intensive research work has been carried out in the literature simulating light trajectories and reconstructing the corresponding optical appearance for a wide array of modified black holes and ultracompact objects. The corresponding images are directly affected not only by the background spacetime geometry but also by the physics of the accretion disk, whose combination yields a characteristic fingerprint. In this paper, we consider such a fingerprint for objects which are not asymptotically flat but instead approach an anti–de Sitter spacetime. This assumption significantly influences light trajectories and, consequently, the corresponding images of the objects as seen by an observer at some distance, which can be used in future VLBI observations for testing alternatives of this kind to the Kerr paradigm. We illustrate our considerations with the examples of a Schwarzschild–anti–de Sitter black hole and a black string, discussing their most notable departures from canonical, asymptotically flat black hole spacetimes.

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