Related papers: Caustic Crossing Events and Source Models in Gravi…
The monitoring of the gravitational lens Q2237+0305 carried out by the OGLE group during 1997--1999 is analyzed. The significant light amplifications in the C and A quasar components with maxima in mid- and late 1999, respectively, are…
Quasar microlensing can be used to constrain important astrophysical properties, such as the accretion disk size and the amount of stars in the lensing galaxy. The associated brightness variations over time, in particular high magnification…
We propose two methods that enable us to obtain approximate solutions of the lens equation near a fold caustic with an arbitrary degree of accuracy. We obtain "post-linear" corrections to the well-known formula in the linear caustic…
The gravitational field of a galaxy can act as a lens and deflect the light emitted by a more distant object such as a quasar. Strong gravitational lensing causes multiple images of the same quasar to appear in the sky. Since the light in…
The central regions of the gravitationally lensed quasar Q2237+0305 can be indirectly resolved on nano-arcsecond scales if viewed spectrophotometricly during a microlensing high magnification event (HME). Q2237+0305 is currently being…
Gravitational lensing is the deflection of light rays due to the gravity of intervening masses. This phenomenon is observed in a variety of scales and configurations, involving any non-uniform mass such as planets, stars, galaxies, clusters…
We present a tool to generate mock quasar microlensing light curves and sample them according to any observing strategy. An updated treatment of the fixed and random velocity components of observer, lens, and source is used, together with a…
Numerical simulations and theoretical studies of the gravitational microlensing effect of a population of small bodies distributed along the line of sight to a compact light source such as a quasar indicate that caustic crossing effects…
Recent observations show a population of active galaxies with milliarcseconds offsets between optical and radio emission. Such offsets can be an indication of extreme phenomena associated with supermassive black holes including relativistic…
We have worked out simple analytical formulae that accurately approximate the relationship between the position of the source with respect to the lens center and the amplification of the images, hence the lens cross section, for realistic…
Gravitational lensing can amplify the apparent brightness of distant sources. Images that are highly magnified are often part of multiply-imaged systems, but we consider the possibility of having large magnifications without additional…
Gravitational lensing is the phenomenon arising when light rays are deflected by the mass between the source and the observer. Largely magnified and highly distorted images of background galaxies are formed by these angular deflections if…
Recently, Heyrovsk\'y & Sasselov (1999) investigated the sensitivity of {\it single-lens} gravitational microlensing event light curves to small spots and found that during source transit events spots can cause deviations in amplification…
The inner regions of active galaxies host the most extreme and energetic phenomena in the universe including, relativistic jets, supermassive black hole binaries, and recoiling supermassive black holes. However, many of these sources cannot…
A new window to observing individual stars and other small sources at cosmological distances was opened recently, with the detection of several caustic-crossing events in galaxy cluster fields. Many more such events are expected soon from…
In quasars which are lensed by galaxies, the point-like images sometimes show sharp and uncorrelated brightness variations (microlensing). These brightness changes are associated with the innermost region of the quasar passing through a…
If an extended source, such as a galaxy, is gravitationally lensed by a massive object in the foreground, the lensing distorts the observed image. It is straightforward to simulate what the observed image would be for a particular lens and…
Gravitational lensing of point sources located inside the lens caustic is known to produce four images in a configuration closely related to the source position. We study this relation in the particular case of a sample of quadruply-imaged…
Caustic-crossing stars observed in giant arcs behind galaxy clusters provide a powerful probe of dark matter substructure. While previous work has focused on point-like lenses such as primordial black holes, we extend this framework to…
Gravitational lensing is the phenomenon where the presence of matter (called a lens) bends the path of light-like trajectories travelling nearby. Similar to the geometric optics limit of electromagnetic waves, gravitational lensing of…