Gravitational microlensing of gamma-ray blazars

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the effects of gravitational microlensing on compact and distant $\gamma$-ray blazars. These objects have $\gamma$-ray emitting regions which are small enough as to be affected by microlensing effects produced by stars lying in intermediate galaxies. We analyze the temporal evolution of the gamma-ray magnification for sources moving in a caustic pattern field, where the combined effects of thousands of stars are taken into account using a numerical technique. We propose that some of the unidentified $\gamma$-ray sources (particularly some of those lying at high galactic latitude whose gamma-ray statistical properties are very similar to detected $\gamma$-ray blazars) are indeed the result of gravitational lensing magnification of background undetected Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs).

30 pages, 27 figures. Four figures are being submitted only as .gif files, and should be printed separately. The abstract below has been shortened from the actual version appearing in the paper

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• Fermi-LAT Detection of Gravitational Lens Delayed Gamma-ray Flares from Blazar B0218+357
• XMM-Newton observations of a sample of gamma-ray loud active galactic nuclei
• First evidence for a gravitational lensing-induced echo in gamma rays with Fermi LAT
• Astrometric Microlensing of Quasars : Dependence on surface mass density and external shear
• Spectroscopic monitoring of the BL Lac object AO 0235+164
• The remarkable gamma-ray activity in the gravitationally lensed blazar PKS 1830-211
• Microlensing constraint on the size of the gamma-ray emission region in blazar B0218+357
• Spectroscopy and polarimetry of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1004+4112 with the 6m SAO RAS telescope
• High energy properties of PKS 1830-211