A note on a linearized approach to gravitational lensing

A recent paper by Walters, Forbes and Jarvis presented new kinematic formulae for ray tracing in gravitational lensing models. The approach can generate caustic maps, but is computationally expensive. Here, a linearized approximation to that formulation is presented. Although still complicated, the linearized equations admit a remarkable closed-form solution. As a result, linearized approximations to the caustic patterns may be generated extremely rapidly, and are found to be in good agreement with the results of full non-linear computation. The usual Einstein-angle approximation is derived as a small angle approximation to the solution presented here.