Microlensing induced absorption line variability

Abstract

Gravitational microlensing has proven to be a powerful probe of both the structure at the heart of quasars and the mass function of compact objects in foreground lenses. This paper examines the potential of gravitational microlensing in probing the scale of structure in absorbing material within the lensing galaxy. We find that, in this high optical depth regime, significant variations in the equivalent width of absorption features can be induced, although the details of these are dependent upon the scale of structure of the absorbing material. The paper concludes with an examination of the absorption line variability observed in the gravitationally lensed quasar PKS1830-211, demonstrating how this may indicate the presence of small scale structure in the cold molecular gas present within the lensing galaxy.

arXiv comment10 Pages, Accepted for publication in MNRAS - Figures reduced

References in corpus (15)

• Possible Gravitational Microlensing of a Star in the Large Magellanic Cloud
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• The Time Delay in the Gravitational Lens PKS 1830-211
• Gravitational Microlensing with the Space Interferometry Mission
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• Determining the Microlens Mass Function from Quasar Microlensing Statistics
• Limits on the microlens mass function of Q2237+0305
• The Statistics of Microlensing Light Curves: I. Amplification Probability Distributions
• Cosmic alignment towards the radio Einstein ring PKS 1830-211 ?
• Microlensing of Broad Absorption Line Quasars
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• Microlensing of Quasars

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Discovery of HI gas in a young radio galaxy at $z=0.44$ using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• Drastic changes in the molecular absorption at redshift z=0.89 toward the quasar PKS 1830-211
• SDSS J1335+0118: A New Two-Image Gravitational Lens
• Illuminating the past 8 billion years of cold gas towards two gravitationally lensed quasars
• Intervening Metal Systems in GRB and QSO sight-lines: The Mgii and Civ Question
• Cosmo-tomography toward PKS1830-211: Variability of the quasar and of its foreground molecular absorption monitored with ALMA
• Gravitational Microlensing and the Structure of Quasar Outflows
• Influence of gravitational microlensing on broad absorption lines of QSOs: The case of the Fe K$\alpha$ line
• Probing Sub-parsec Structure in the Lyman Alpha Forest with Gravitational Microlensing