A New Microlensing Event in the Doubly-Imaged Quasar Q0957+561
Abstract
We present evidence for ultraviolet/optical microlensing in the gravitationally lensed quasar Q0957+561. We combine new measurements from our optical monitoring campaign at the United States Naval Observatory, Flagstaff (USNO) with measurements from the literature and find that the time-delay-corrected r-band flux ratio m_A - m_B has increased by ~0.1 magnitudes over a period of five years beginning in the fall of 2005. We apply our Monte Carlo microlensing analysis procedure to the composite light curves, obtaining a measurement of the optical accretion disk size, log {(r_s/cm)[cos(i)/0.5]^{1/2}} = 16.2^{+0.5}_{-0.6}, that is consistent with the quasar accretion disk size - black hole mass relation.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1107.0982,
title = {A New Microlensing Event in the Doubly-Imaged Quasar Q0957+561},
author = {Laura J. Hainline and Christopher W. Morgan and J. N. Beach and C. S. Kochanek and Hugh C. Harris and T. Tilleman and Ross Fadely and Emilio E. Falco and T. X. Le},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.0982},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Replaced with accepted version. Minor adjustments to text but conclusions unchanged. Data in Table 2 have been updated and table now includes additional observations