Microlensing of Quasars

Abstract

There are two possible causes of variability in gravitationally lensed quasars: intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar and ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced variability can be used to study two cosmological issues of great interest: the size and brightness profile of quasars on one hand, and the distribution of compact (dark) matter along the line of sight on the other. Here we present a summary of recent observational evidence for quasar microlensing as well as of theoretical progress in the field. Particular emphasis is given to the questions which microlensing can address regarding the search for dark matter, both in the halos of lensing galaxies and in a cosmologically distributed form. A discussion of desired observations and required theoretical studies is presented as a conclusion/outlook.

6 pages; to appear in the Proceedings of the XXth Moriond Astrophysics Meeting "Cosmological Physics with Gravitational Lensing" (Les Arcs, France, March 11-18, 2000), eds. J.-P. Kneib, Y. Mellier, M. Moniez and J. Tran Thanh Van

References in corpus (7)

• The MACHO Project: Microlensing Results from 5.7 Years of LMC Observations
• The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment. Monitoring of QSO 2237+0305
• Imaging a Quasar Accretion Disk with Microlensing
• A gravitational microlensing determination of continuum source size in Q2237+0305
• Limits on the microlens mass function of Q2237+0305
• NICMOS images of JVAS/CLASS gravitational lens systems
• Hourly Variability in Q0957+561

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• Finite Source Effects in Strong Lensing: Implications for the Substructure Mass Scale
• Multi wavelength study of the gravitational lens system RXS J1131-1231: II Lens model and source reconstruction
• Theoretical Aspects of Gravitational Lensing in TeVeS
• Astrometric Microlensing of Quasars : Dependence on surface mass density and external shear
• Microlensing of a Biconical Broad Line Region
• On the contribution of microlensing to X-ray variability of high-redshifted QSOs
• Discovery and first models of the quadruply lensed quasar SDSS J1433+6007
• The Mean Number of Extra Micro-Image Pairs for Macro-Lensed Quasars
• Mid-infrared microlensing of accretion disc and dusty torus in quasars: effects on flux ratio anomalies
• VLA and ALMA observations of the lensed radio-quiet quasar SDSS J0924+0219: a molecular structure in a 3 microJy radio source
• Imprints of the quasar structure in time-delay light curves: Microlensing-aided reverberation mapping
• Measuring time delays: II. Using observations of the unresolved flux and astrometry
• Measuring time delays: I. Using a flux time series that is a linear combination of time-shifted light curves
• Microlensing induced absorption line variability
• Detection of millimeter-wave coronal emission in a quasar at cosmological distance using microlensing
• Gravitational lensing of fast radio bursts: prospects for probing microlens populations in lensing galaxies