Measuring lens dimensionality in extreme scattering events through wave optics

Abstract

Compact radio sources have been observed to undergo large, frequency dependent changes in intensity due to lensing by structures in the interstellar medium, in so-called "extreme scattering events" (ESEs). While the study of astrophysical plasma lensing has primarily focused on the geometric limit of optics, coherent radio sources such as pulsars exhibit wave effects when lensed. The additional phase information provided by interference effects in the wave regime may yield more information about the lens than could be obtained in the geometric regime. In this paper, we show that, using wave effects, one can potentially distinguish a one-dimensional lens (where "one-dimensional" includes both highly elongated lenses, as well as perfectly axisymmetric lenses) from a fully two-dimensional lens, with minimal assumptions on the form of the lensing potential.

9 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Two families of astrophysical diverging lens models
• The finite source size effect and the wave optics in gravitational lensing
• Imaginary images and Stokes phenomena in the weak plasma lensing of coherent sources
• Plasma microlensing dynamic spectrum probing fine structures in the ionized interstellar medium
• Statistical inference of the distance to ASKAP FRBs

Cited by in corpus (4)

• On the double-plane plasma lensing
• Acquiring the Lefschetz thimbles: efficient evaluation of the diffraction integral for lensing in wave optics
• Lensing point-spread function of coherent astrophysical sources and non-trivial wave effects
• Investigating Extreme Scattering Events by Volumetric Ray-tracing