Related papers: Effects of Kerr Strong Gravity on Quasar X-ray Mic…
Recent observations have provided strong evidence for the presence of an Electron Scattering Region (ESR) within the central regions of AGNs. This is responsible for reprocessing emission from the accretion disk into polarised radiation.…
The standard treatment of gravitational lensing by a point mass lens M is based on a weak-field deflection angle a = 2/x, where x = (r c^2)/(2 G M) with r the distance of closest approach to the mass of a lensed light ray. It was shown that…
The Kerr spacetime is one of the most widely known solutions to Einstein's vacuum field equations and is commonly used to describe a black hole with mass $m$ and spin $a$. Astrophysical observations in the electromagnetic spectrum as well…
Microlensing promises to be a powerful tool for studying distant galaxies and quasars. As the data and models improve, there are systematic effects that need to be explored. Quasar continuum and broad-line regions may respond differently to…
Gravitational microlensing at cosmological distances is potentially a powerful tool for probing the mass functions of stars and compact objects in other galaxies. In the case of multiply-imaged quasars, microlensing data has been used to…
In this paper, we investigate the gravitational lensing effect for the Schwarzschild-like black hole spacetime in the background of a Kalb-Ramond (KR) field proposed in [K. Yang et. al., Phys. Rev. D 108 (2023) 124004]. The solution is…
We use thirteen seasons of R-band photometry from the 1.2m Leonard Euler Swiss Telescope at La Silla to examine microlensing variability in the quadruply-imaged lensed quasar WFI 2026-4536. The lightcurves exhibit ${\sim}\,0.2\,\text{mag}$…
If an accretion disk around a black hole is illuminated by hard X-rays from non-thermal coronae, fluorescent iron lines will be emitted from the inner region of the accretion disk. The emission line profiles will show a variety of strong…
We use gravitational microlensing of the four images of the z=0.658 quasar RXJ1131-1231 to measure the sizes of the optical and X-ray emission regions of the quasar. The (face-on) scale length of the optical disk at rest frame 400 nm is 1.3…
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 present results from monitoring observations of the gravitationally lensed quasar RX J1131-1231 performed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray observations were planned with relatively long exposures that allowed a search for…
Observations of Galactic black hole sources are traditionally done in the classical X-ray range (2 -- 10 keV) due to sensitivity constraints. Most of the accretion power, however, is radiated above 10 keV and the study of these sources in…
There are two possible causes of variability in gravitationally lensed quasars: intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar and ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced…
According to the asymptotically safe gravity, black holes may have characteristics different from those described according to general relativity if the running of the gravitational constant coupling happens at low energies. Particularly,…
In this paper, we investigate the strong gravitational lensing by the stationary, axially-symmetric black hole in Kerr-Taub-NUT spacetime in the strong field limit. The deflection angle of light ray and other strong deflection limit…
The narrow-line quasar PHL 1092 was observed by XMM-Newton at two epochs separated by nearly thirty months. Timing analyses confirm the extreme variability observed during previous X-ray missions. A measurement of the radiative efficiency…
We present a detailed comparison of mass measurements for clusters of galaxies using ASCA and ROSAT X-ray data and constraints from strong and weak gravitational lensing. Our results for a sample of 13 clusters provide a consistent…
Recent work has demonstrated the potential of gravitationally lensed quasars to extend measurements of black hole spin out to high-redshift with the current generation of X-ray observatories. Here we present an analysis of a large sample of…
We show that at any given time, the Galactocentric black hole Sgr A* is expected to be microlensing N(lens)=1.7 bulge stars if the threshold of detectability of the fainter image is K(thr)=21, and about N(lens)=8 sources if K(thr)=23. The…
We aim to unveil the structure of the continuum and broad-emission line (BEL) emitting regions in the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1339+1310 by examining the distinct signatures of microlensing present in this system. Our study…