Related papers: Stellar rotation effects in polarimetric microlens…
Linear polarimetry of unresolved stars is a powerful method for discerning or constraining the geometry of a source and its environment, since spherical sources produce no net polarization. However, a general challenge to interpreting…
The first micro-lensing event discovered towards the Small Magellanic Cloud by the MACHO collaboration (Alcock et al. 1997b) had a very long time scale, t_0 = 123 days. The EROS collaboration (Palanque-Delabrouille et al. 1997) discovered a…
The topic of wind-clumping has been the subject of much activity in recent years, due to the impact that it can have on derived mass-loss rates. Here we present an alternative method of investigating wind-clumping, that of polarimetry. We…
Subject of this paper is the weak lensing effect on galaxies that show intrinsically correlated ellipticities. In our model, we investigate the distortion of the ellipticity field if the galaxies experience an apparent shift in their…
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…
We consider the effect of rapid rotation on the light curves of neutron stars with hot polar caps. For $P \approx 3$ms spin periods, the pulse fractions can be as much as an order of magnitude larger than with simple slowly-rotating…
Alignments in the angular momentum vectors of galaxies can induce large scale correlations in their projected orientations. Such alignments arise from the tidal torques exerted on neighboring proto-galaxies by the smoothly varying shear…
Large scale correlations in the orientations of galaxies can result from alignments in their angular momentum vectors. These alignments arise from the tidal torques exerted on neighboring proto-galaxies by the smoothly varying shear field.…
Clumping in the winds of massive stars may significantly reduce empirical mass-loss rates, and which in turn may have a large impact on our understanding of massive star evolution. Here, we investigate wind-clumping through the linear…
Weak lensing by large scale structure induces correlated ellipticities in the images of distant galaxies. The two-point correlation is determined by the matter power spectrum along the line of sight. We use the fully nonlinear evolution of…
Future high precision photometric measurements of transiting extrasolar planets promise to tell us much about the nature of these systems. We examine how atmospheric lensing and (projected) planet oblateness/ellipticity modify transit light…
To understand better the polarized radiative transfer near the surface of rotating massive stars that remain nearly spherically symmetric, we use plane-parallel stellar atmosphere models to explore the unique opportunity presented by the…
Does gravity affect the polarization of electromagnetic radiation in an observable way? The effect of gravity on the observed polarization of a ray of electromagnetic radiation is investigated for an arbitrary 4-dimensional spacetime and…
We propose a method that can determine the ellipticities of source stars of microlensing events produced by binary lenses. The method is based on the fact that the products of the caustic-crossing timescale, $\Delta t$, and the cosine of…
Light scattered off particles can become linearly polarized. Stars surrounded by oblique, co-rotating envelopes are therefore expected to manifest periodic linear polarimetric variations. The electron scattering magnetospheres of magnetic…
Aims: This paper extends previous studies in modeling time varying linear polarization due to axisymmetric magnetic fields in rotating stars. We use the Hanle effect to predict variations in net line polarization, and use geometric…
Astrometric observations of microlensing events can be used to obtain important information about lenses. During these events, the shift of the position of the multiple image centroid with respect to the source star location can be…
We present results of numerical simulations of flux and linear polarization variations in transiting exoplanetary systems, caused by the host star disk symmetry breaking. We consider different configurations of planetary transits depending…
We present a simple prescription for the rotation of polarization produced by a relativistically moving gravitational lens, applicable to arbitrary deflection angle and arbitrary velocity of the lens. When geometric optics is applicable,…
If gravitational microlensing occurs in a binary-source system, both source components are magnified, and the resulting light curve deviates from the standard one of a single source event. However, in most cases only one source component is…