In this paper we give a general expression for the energy shift of massless particles traveling through the gravitational field of an arbitrary matter distribution as calculated in the weak field limit in an asymptotically flat space-time. It is not assumed that matter is nonrelativistic. We demonstrate the surprising result that if the matter is illuminated by a uniform brightness background that the brightness pattern observed at a given point in space-time (modulo a term dependent on the observer’s velocity) depends only on the matter distribution on the observer’s past light cone. These results apply directly to the cosmological MBR anisotropy pattern generated in the immediate vicinity of an object such as a cosmic string or global texture. We apply these results to cosmic strings, finding a correction to previously published results in the small-angle approximation. We also derive the full-sky anisotropy pattern of a collapsing texture knot.

• Received 29 June 1994

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.51.1465