English

A Fast Concentric-disk Contour Integration Method For Microlensing Limb-darkening Effect

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2026-07-14 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

Incorporating limb darkening is a computationally demanding step in contour-integration-based microlensing modeling. Conventional concentric-ring integration is incompatible with high-order quadrature schemes, limiting efficiency. We develop a new concentric-disk method, which reformulates the limb-darkening integral and enables the application of high-order adaptive quadrature, significantly accelerating the computation. While mainly demonstrated using a linear limb-darkening profile, the method readily extends to more general limb-darkening profiles. As a source effect, it applies to lens systems of any complexity. The method achieves a convergence rate scaling faster than Nuni4N_{\rm{uni}}^{-4} with the number of uniform-source magnification evaluations NuniN_{\rm{uni}}, a significant improvement over the concentric-ring Nuni2N_{\rm{uni}}^{-2} scaling. For a relative accuracy of 10610^{-6}, the concentric-disk approach typically requires only 30%30\% or less of the computational cost of traditional algorithms. This method has been implemented in the binary-lens contour integration code \texttt{Twinkle}, providing an efficient and precise tool for analyzing current and future high-precision microlensing observations.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.12483,
  title  = {A Fast Concentric-disk Contour Integration Method For Microlensing Limb-darkening Effect},
  author = {Suwei Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.12483},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. 16 pages, 4 figures