A photon sphere is known as the geometrical structure that shapes a black hole shadow. The mechanism is well understood for static or stationary black hole spacetimes such as the Schwarzschild and the Kerr spacetimes. In this paper, we investigate and explicitly specify a photon sphere that shapes a black hole shadow in a dynamical spacetime while taking the global structure of the spacetime into account. We consider dynamical and eternal black hole cases of the Vaidya spacetime, which represents a spherically symmetric black hole with accreting null dust. First, we numerically show that there are the dynamical photon sphere and photon orbits corresponding to the shadow edge in a moderate accretion case. Second, the photon spheres are derived analytically in special cases. Finally, we discuss the relation between our photon sphere and the several notions defined as a photon sphere generalization.

• Received 10 March 2022
• Accepted 28 April 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.104040