Related papers: Microlensing by Cosmic Strings
If a significant fraction of dark matter is in the form of compact objects, they will cause microlensing effects in the gravitational wave (GW) signals observable by LIGO and Virgo. From the non-observation of microlensing signatures in the…
Fast Radio bursts (FRBs), bright transients with millisecond durations at $\sim$ GHz and typical redshifts probably $>0.8$, are likely to be gravitationally lensed by intervening galaxies. Since the time delay between images of strongly…
If the Galaxy contains ~10^{11}M_sol in cold gas clouds of ~Jovian mass and \~AU size, these clouds will act as converging lenses for optical light, magnifying background stars at a detectable rate. The resulting light curves can resemble…
Some aspects of gravitational lensing by large scale structure (LSS) are investigated. We show that lensing causes the damping tail of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum to fall less rapidly with decreasing angular scale…
Intensive monitoring campaigns have recently attempted to measure the time delays between multiple images of gravitational lenses. Some of the resulting light-curves show puzzling low-level, rapid variability which is unique to individual…
Possibly the only unambiguous verification that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are at cosmological distances would be the observation of multiple images of a gravitationally lensed burst. Each images would arrive at a different time, but exhibit…
The mass of the lenses giving rise to Galactic microlensing events can be constrained by measuring the relative lens-source proper motion and lens flux. The flux of the lens can be separated from that of the source, companions to the…
In this paper we study the footprint of cosmic string as the topological defects in the very early universe on the cosmic microwave background radiation. We develop the method of level crossing analysis in the context of the well-known…
All quasars vary in their optical flux on a time-scale of years, and it has been proposed that these variations are principally due to gravitational lensing by a cosmologically distributed population of planetary mass objects. This…
The statistical distribution of the masses of planets about stars between the Sun and the center of the galaxy is constrained to within a factor of three by an intensive search for planets during microlensing events. Projected separations…
Gravitational microlensing is a robust tool to detect and directly measure the abundance and mass of any kind of compact objects, either in our galaxy or in the extragalatic domain. On basis to generic, broadly applicable arguments, it is…
Microlensing not only brings extra magnification lightcurves on top of the intrinsic ones but also shifts them in time domain, making the actual time-delays between images of strongly lensed active galactic nucleus change on the $\sim$…
We present the results of microlens ray-tracing simulations showing the effect of absorbing material between a source quasar and a lensing galaxy in a gravitational lens system. We find that, in addition to brightness fluctuations due to…
It is possible that superstrings, as well as other one-dimensional branes, could have been produced in the early universe and then expanded to cosmic size today. I discuss the conditions under which this will occur, and the signatures of…
The lens candidate CSL-1 has been interpreted as evidence for a cosmic string. Here we test the hypothesis that the lensing comes from a tidally disrupted dark matter halo. We calculate the mass-density relationship that one would expect…
Clusters of galaxies gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, resulting in a distinct imprint in the CMB on arcminute scales. Measurement of this effect offers a promising way to constrain the masses of galaxy…
The gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by inspiraling binary black holes, expected to be detected by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), could be used to determine the luminosity distance to these sources with the unprecedented…
We study the effect of weak lensing by cosmic (super-)strings on the higher-order statistics of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). A cosmic string segment is expected to cause weak lensing as well as an integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW)…
We search the COSMOS survey for pairs of galaxies consistent with the gravitational lensing signature of a cosmic string. The COSMOS survey imaged 1.64 square degrees using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble Space…
Foreground galaxies that amplify the light from background quasars may also dim that light if the galaxies contain enough dust. Extinction by dust in lenses could hide the large number of lensed systems predicted for a flat universe with a…