Femtolens Imaging of a Quasar Central Engine Using a Dwarf Star Telescope

Abstract

We show that it is possible to image the structure of a distant quasar on scales of $\sim 1$AU by constructing a telescope which uses a nearby dwarf star as its ``primary lens'' together with a satellite-borne ``secondary''. The image produced by the primary is magnified by $\sim 10^5$ in one direction but is contracted by 0.5 in the other, and therefore contains highly degenerate one-dimensional information about the two-dimensional source. We discuss various methods for extracting information about the second dimension including ``femtolens interferometry'' where one measures the interference between different parts of the one-dimensional image with each other. Assuming that the satellite could be dispatched to a position along a star-quasar line of sight at a distance $r$ from the Sun, the nearest available dwarf-star primary is likely to be at $\sim 15\,\pc\,(r/40\,\rm AU)^{-2}$. The secondary should consist of a one-dimensional array of mirrors extending $\sim 700$m to achieve 1 AU resolution, or $\sim 100$m to achieve 4 AU resolution.

12 pages including 3 embedded figures

References in corpus (3)

• The MACHO Project: 45 Candidate Microlensing Events from the First Year Galactic Bulge Data
• Unlensing Multiple Arcs in 0024+1654: Reconstruction of the Source Image
• Microlensing Events from Measurements of the Deflection Angle

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• Spectrophotometric Resolution of Stellar Atmospheres with Microlensing
• Wavefronts, Caustic Sheets, and Caustic Surfing in Gravitational Lensing
• Quantum Uncertainty Considerations for Gravitational Lens Interferometry