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Limitations in Testing General Relativity via Photon Ring Observations

The photon ring's subring structure may not be a pure spacetime observable due to contamination from interstellar scattering, wave-optics effects, and Faraday rotation. The geometric optics approximation may not be valid at certain wavelengths, potentially washing out higher-order subrings. These limitations could affect the accuracy of general relativity tests using photon ring observations.

Science, Physics, Relativity