Related papers: Cosmological nanolensing by dense gas clouds
We present a detailed strong lensing analysis of an HST/ACS legacy dataset for the first gravitational lens, Q0957+561. With deep imaging we identify 24 new strongly lensed features, which we use to constrain mass models. We model the…
Cosmologically distributed compact dark matter objects with masses in the approximate range of 0.001 to 1 solar masses can amplify the continuum emission of a quasar through gravitational microlensing, without appreciably affecting its…
We present a microlensing analysis of 61 Chandra observations of 14 quadruply lensed quasars. X-ray flux measurements of the individual quasar images give a clean determination of the microlensing effects in the lensing galaxy and thus…
Strong gravitational lensing distorts our view of sources at cosmological distances but brings invaluable constraints on the mass content of foreground objects and on the geometry and properties of the Universe. We report the detection of a…
(abridged) Gravitationally lensed quasars can be used as powerful cosmological and astrophysical probes. We can (i) infer the Hubble constant based on the time-delay technique, (ii) unveil substructures along the l.o.s. toward distant…
We show that most gravitational lenses lie on the passively evolving fundamental plane for early-type galaxies. For burst star formation models (1 Gyr of star formation, then quiescence) in low Omega_0 cosmologies, the stellar populations…
Strong gravitational lensing of quasars has the potential to unlock the poorly understood physics of these fascinating objects, as well as serve as a probe of the lensing mass distribution and of cosmological parameters. In particular,…
We determine 37 differential extinctions in 23 gravitational lens galaxies over the range 0 < z_l < 1. Only 7 of the 23 systems have spectral differences consistent with no differential extinction. The median differential extinction for the…
By comparing the results from numerical microlensing simulations to the observed long-term variability of quasars, strong upper limits on the cosmological density of compact objects in the 0.0001-1 solar mass range may in principle be…
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…
Gravitational lensing predicts an enhancement of the density of bright, distant QSOs around foreground galaxies. We measure this QSO-galaxy correlation w_qg for two complete samples of radio-loud quasars, the southern 1Jy and Half-Jansky…
The nature of the dark matter remains a mystery. The possibility of an unstable dark matter particle decaying to invisible daughter particles has been explored many times in the past few decades. Meanwhile, weak gravitational lensing shear…
Knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of Galactic molecular clouds is important for understanding how clouds are affected by processes such as turbulence and magnetic fields and how this structure effects star formation within them.…
Weak gravitational lensing by foreground density perturbations generates a gradient mode in the shear of background images. In contrast, cosmological tensor perturbations induce a non-zero curl mode associated with image rotations. In this…
We study the effect of the cosmological constant on the statistical properties of gravitational lenses in flat cosmologies (Omega_{0}+lambda_{0} = 1). It is shown that some of the lens observables are strongly affected by the cosmological…
The gravitational lensing distortion of distant sources by the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe has been extensively studied. In contrast, very little is known about the effects due to the large-scale distribution of dark…
We present the results of the first long-term (2.2 years) spectroscopic monitoring of a gravitationally lensed quasar, namely the Einstein Cross Q2237+0305. The goal of this paper is to present the observational facts to be compared in…
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…
Interstellar dust at high Galactic latitudes can influence astronomical foreground subtraction, produce diffuse scattered light, and soften the ultraviolet spectra of quasars. In a sample of 94 sight lines toward quasars at high latitude…
Observation of the expansion history of the Universe allows exploration of the physical properties and energy density of the Universe's various constituents. Standardizable candles such as Type Ia supernovae remain one of the most promising…