An optical n-body gravitational lens analogy

Abstract

Raised menisci around small discs positioned to pull up a water-air interface provide a well controllable experimental setup capable of reproducing much of the rich phenomenology of gravitational lensing (or microlensing events) by $n$-body clusters. Results are shown for single, binary and triple mass lenses. The scheme represents a versatile testbench for the (astro)physics of general relativity's gravitational lens effects, including high multiplicity imaging of extended sources.

7 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Two New Large Separation Gravitational Lenses from SDSS
• Critical Curves and Caustics of Triple-lens Models
• An alternative parameterisation for binary-lens caustic-crossing events
• n-point Gravitational Lenses with 5(n-1) Images
• Triple-lens Gravitational Microlensing: Critical Curves for Arbitrary Spatial Configuration
• Bubble optics
• Strong Lensing by Binary Galaxies Modelled as Isothermal Spheres
• Is Gravitational Lensing by Intercluster Filaments Always Negligible?