Cosmological Final Focus Systems

We develop the many striking parallels between the dynamics of light streams from distant galaxies and particle beams in accelerator final focus systems. Notably the deflections of light by mass clumps are identical to the kicks arising from the long-range beam-beam interactions of two counter-rotating particle beams (known as parasitic crossings). These deflections have sextupolar as well as quadrupolar components. We estimate the strength of such distortions for a variety of circumstances and argue that the sextupolar distortions from clumping within clusters may be observable. This possibility is enhanced by the facts that i) the sextupolar distortions of background galaxies is a factor of 5 smaller than the quadrupolar distortion, ii) the angular orientation of the sextupolar and quadrupolar distortions from a mass distribution would be correlated, appearing as a slightly curved image, iii) these effects should be spatially clumped on the sky.