Related papers: A new parameter space study of cosmological microl…
We show that a space-based gravitational microlensing survey for terrestrial extra-solar planets is feasible in the near future, and could provide a nearly complete picture of the properties of planetary systems in our Galaxy. We present…
Strong gravitational lensing at the galaxy scale is a valuable tool for various applications in astrophysics and cosmology. The primary uses of galaxy-scale lensing are to study elliptical galaxies' mass structure and evolution, constrain…
We study microlensing of the faint images that form close to the centers of strong gravitational lens galaxies. These central images, which have finally begun to yield to observations, naturally appear in dense stellar fields and may be…
We propose and discuss a new experimental approach to measure the centroid shift induced by gravitational microlensing in the images of lensed quasars (astrometric microlensing). Our strategy is based on taking the photocenter of a region…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-shear regions are directly…
While amongst the most luminous objects in the universe, many details regarding the inner structure of quasars remain unknown. One such area is the mechanism promoting increased polarisation in the broad absorption line troughs of certain…
Quantifying image distortions caused by strong gravitational lensing and estimating the corresponding matter distribution in lensing galaxies has been primarily performed by maximum likelihood modeling of observations. This is typically a…
Highly magnified stars ($\mu$ $>$ 100) are now outinely identified as transient events at cosmological distances thanks to microlensing by intra-cluster stars near the critical curves of galaxy clusters. Using the {\it James Webb} Space…
Recent studies have shown that line profile distortions are commonly observed in gravitationally lensed quasar spectra. We investigate the effect of gravitational microlensing on quasar broad emission line profiles and their underlying…
We present a concept study on weak lensing map reconstruction through the cosmic magnification effect in galaxy number density distribution. We propose a minimal variance linear estimator to minimize both the dominant systematical and…
Luminous tracers have been used extensively to map the large-scale matter distribution in the Universe. Similarly the dynamics of stars or galaxies can be used to estimate masses of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. However, assumptions…
A long-standing problem in astrophysics is to measure the mass associated with galaxies. Gravitational lensing provides one of the cleanest ways to make this measurement. To date, the most powerful lensing probes of galactic mass have been…
Strong lensing is a powerful tool to address three major astrophysical issues: understanding the spatial distribution of mass at kpc and sub-kpc scale, where baryons and dark matter interact to shape galaxies as we see them; determining the…
We aim to use signatures of microlensing induced by stars in the foreground lens galaxy to infer the size of the accretion disk in the gravitationally lensed quasar Q 0957+561. The long-term photometric monitoring of this system (which so…
Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for studying the distribution of mass in the Universe. Understanding the magnification bias effect in gravitational lensing and its impact on the flux of sub-millimetre galaxies (SMGs) is crucial for…
We qualitatively study the effects of gravitational microlensing on our view of unresolved extragalactic star formation regions. Using a general gravitational microlensing configuration, we perform a number of simulations that reveal that…
Weak gravitational lensing provides a unique method to map directly the dark matter in the Universe. The majority of lensing analyses uses the two-point statistics of the cosmic shear field to constrain the cosmological model yielding…
The time delay between images of strongly gravitationally lensed quasars is an established cosmological probe. Its limitations, however, include uncertainties in the assumed mass distribution of the lens. We re-examine the methodology of a…
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…
Context. The gravitational lens system SDSS J1004+4112 was the first known example of a quasar lensed by a galaxy cluster. The interest in this system has been renewed following the publication of r-band light curves spanning 14.5 years and…