Geodesics and light deflection in Schwarzschild-like spacetime from cosmology-inspired modified gravity

Abstract We investigate cosmology-driven modifications to Schwarzschild-like black hole spacetimes and analyze their impact on photon propagation, gravitational lensing, and shadow observation. The gravitational deflection angle is computed using the Rindler–Is-hak method, which incorporates finite-distance corrections and provides a consistent framework for non-asym-ptotically flat spacetimes. The effective potential for null geodesics exhibits a single unstable maximum corresponding to the photon sphere, and we study photon orbits classified according to the critical impact parameter into capture, escape, and unstable circular trajectories. Our analysis shows that the deflection angle decreases with increasing model parameter $$(\alpha )$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>α</mml:mi> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , resulting in weaker light bending compared to the Schwarzschild case. In addition, we examine the angular diameter of the black hole shadow as measured by a static observer, highlighting its dependence on the cosmological modification parameters. These results suggest that high-precision astrometric and lensing observations can place meaningful constraints on cosmology-inspired modifications to gravity, thereby linking astrophysical black holes with cosmic expansion and offering a novel probe of gravitational physics in strong-field regimes.