Microlensing variability in time-delay quasars
Astrophysics
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
We have searched for microlensing variability in the light curves of five gravitationally lensed quasars with well-determined time delays: SBS 1520+530, FBQ 0951+2635, RX J0911+0551, B1600+434 and HE 2149-2745. By comparing the light curve of the leading image with a suitably time offset light curve of a trailing image we find that two (SBS 1520+530 and FBQ 0951+2635) out of the five quasars have significant long-term (years) and short-term (100 days) brightness variations that may be attributed to microlensing.The short-term variations may be due to nanolenses, relativistic hot or cold spots in the quasar accretion disks, or coherent microlensing at large optical depth.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0607133,
title = {Microlensing variability in time-delay quasars},
author = {D. Paraficz and J. Hjorth and I. Burud and P. Jakobsson and A. Eliasdottir},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0607133},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
12 pages, 5 figures, uses natbib.sty and aa.cls