Gravitational Microlensing I: A Unique Astrophysical Tool

Abstract

In this article we review the astrophysical application of gravitational microlensing. After introducing the history of gravitational lensing, we present the key equations and concept of microlensing. The most frequent microlensing events are single-lens events and historically it has been used for searching dark matter in the form of compact astrophysical halo objects in the Galactic halo. We discuss about the degeneracy problem in the parameters of lens and perturbation effects that can partially break the degeneracy between the lens parameters. The rest of paper is about the astrophysical applications of microlensing. One of the important applications is in the stellar physics by probing the surface of source stars in the high magnification microlensing events. The astrometric and polarimetric observations will be complimentary for probing the atmosphere and stellar spots on the surface of source stars. Finally we discuss about the future projects as space based telescopes for parallax and astrometry observations of microlensing events. With this project, we would expect to produce a complete stellar and remnant mass function and study the structure of Galaxy in term of distribution of stars along our line of sight towards the centre of galaxy.

35 pages, 15 Figures, invited review for IJMPD

References in corpus (9)

• Limits on the Macho Content of the Galactic Halo from the EROS-2 Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
• MOA-cam3: a wide-field mosaic CCD camera for a gravitational microlensing survey in New Zealand
• First Space-Based Microlens Parallax Measurement: Spitzer Observations of OGLE-2005-SMC-001
• KOI-3278: A Self-Lensing Binary Star System
• Optimal Survey Strategies and Predicted Planet Yields for the Korean Microlensing Telescope Network
• Microlensing as a probe of the Galactic structure; 20 years of microlensing optical depth studies
• Detectability of Orbital Motion in Stellar Binary and Planetary Microlenses
• Study of a Strategy for Parallax Microlensing Detection Towards the Magellanic Clouds
• Measuring Polarization in microlensing events

Cited by in corpus (23)

• Identifying Strong Lenses with Unsupervised Machine Learning using Convolutional Autoencoder
• Modeling microlensing events with MulensModel
• Understanding EROS2 observations toward the spiral arms within a classical Galactic model framework
• Gravitational Lenses as High-Resolution Telescopes
• Gravitational microlensing in Verlinde's emergent gravity
• Detection of Exoplanet as a Binary Source of Microlensing Events in WFIRST Survey
• Detection of Strongly Lensed Arcs in Galaxy Clusters with Transformers
• Gravitational Microlensing Events as a Target for SETI project
• The MEMO project: Combining all microlensing surveys to search for intermediate-mass Galactic black holes
• Polarimetric microlensing of circumstellar disks
• Gravitational Grating
• The Frequency-Shift in the Gravitational Microlensing
• Parallax in microlensing toward the Magellanic Clouds: effect on detection efficiency and detectability
• Primordial black hole detection through diffractive microlensing
• Resolving Microlensing Events with Triggered VLBI
• Measuring Limb Darkening of Stars in high magnification Microlensing Events by the Finite Element Method
• Microlensing Signatures of Dyson Sphere-like Structures around Primordial Black Holes as Technosignatures of Extraterrestrial Advanced Civilizations
• Mass-velocity dispersion relation by using the \textit{Gaia} data and its effect on interpreting short-duration and degenerate microlensing events
• Blending from binarity in microlensing searches toward the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Frequency Shift in Binary Lensing System
• EROS light curve data base
• Measuring the stellar atmosphere parameters using follow-up polarimetry microlensing observations
• Eclipsing negative-parity image of gravitational microlensing by a giant-lens star