Does light itself bend spacetime?

nonequilibrium

Hello,

I understand light can be accelerated in a gravitational field, because it follows the curves in the spacetimecontinuum. Now I was wondering: does light itself also create a distortion in spacetime and thus attract other things? And are there experiments to confirm this? (E.g. two light beams attracting each other)

fzero

Yes, since light has energy, it acts as a source for gravity and curves space. Note that this is also required by Newton's 3rd law, which applies to gravitational forces in GR. However, the typical energies associated with light in a lab are still way too small to produce measurable effects. Light on light interactions would be even smaller than, for example the deflection of light due to Earth's gravity.