English

Contribution of microlensing to X-ray variability of distant QSOs

Astrophysics 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We consider a contribution of microlensing to the X-ray variability of high-redshifted QSOs. Cosmologically distributed gravitational microlenses could be localized in galaxies (or even in bulge or halo of gravitational macrolenses) or could be distributed in a uniform way. We have analyzed both cases of such distributions. We found that the optical depth for gravitational microlensing caused by cosmologically distributed deflectors could be significant and could reach 1020.110^{-2} - 0.1 at z2z\sim 2. This means that cosmologically distributed deflectors may contribute significantlly to the X-ray variability of high-redshifted QSOs (z>2z>2). Considering that the upper limit of the optical depth (τ0.1\tau\sim 0.1) corresponds to the case where dark matter forms cosmologically distributed deflectors, observations of the X-ray variations of unlensed QSOs can be used for the estimation of the dark matter fraction of microlenses.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0410378,
  title  = {Contribution of microlensing to X-ray variability of distant QSOs},
  author = {Alexander F. Zakharov and Luka C. Popovic and Predrag Jovanovic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0410378},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

6 pages, to appear in "Impact of Gravitational Lensing on Cosmology", IAU Symposium 225, eds. Y. Mellier & G. Meylan