Related papers: Microlensing near macro-caustics
Clusters of galaxies are expected to gravitationally lens the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and thereby generate a distinct signal in the CMB on arcminute scales. Measurements of this effect can be used to constrain the masses of galaxy…
The MACHO project has been monitoring about ten million stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud in the search for gravitational microlensing events caused by massive compact halo objects (Machos) in the halo of the Milky Way. In our standard…
Contrary to naive expectation, diluting the stellar component of the lensing galaxy in a highly magnified system with smoothly distributed ``dark'' matter increases rather than decreases the microlensing fluctuations caused by the remaining…
The two outer triangular caustics (regions of infinite magnification) of a close binary microlens move much faster than the components of the binary themselves, and can even exceed the speed of light. When $\epsilon > 1$, where $\epsilon c$…
An expression is provided for the self-lensing optical depth of the thin LMC disk surrounded by a shroud of stars at larger scale heights. The formula is written in terms of the vertical velocity dispersion of the thin disk population. If…
We investigate microlensing amplification of faint stars in the dense stellar cluster in the Galactic Center (GC) by the super-massive black hole (BH). Such events would appear very close to the position of the radio source SgrA*, which is…
Cosmic superstring loops within the galaxy microlens background point sources lying close to the observer-string line of sight. For suitable alignments, multiple paths coexist and the (achromatic) flux enhancement is a factor of two. We…
Cluster gravitational lensing surveys like the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields survey will detect distant galaxies 10-50 times fainter than any yet discovered. Using these surveys to measure the luminosity function of such faint,…
If compact baryonic objects contribute significantly to the dark matter in our Galaxy, their mass function will present vital clues for galaxy formation theories and star formation processes in the early Universe. Here we discuss what one…
This is the first in a series of papers on the weak lensing effect caused by clusters of galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The photometrically selected cluster sample, known as MaxBCG, includes ~130,000 objects between redshift 0.1 and…
With the spatial resolution of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), dusty galaxies in the distant Universe typically appear as single, compact blobs of dust emission, with a median half-light radius, $\approx$ 1 kpc. Occasionally,…
We report on the detection of gravitational lensing magnification by a population of galaxy groups, at a significance level of 4.9 sigma. Using X-ray selected groups in the COSMOS 1.64 deg^2 field, and high-redshift Lyman break galaxies as…
Context: The number of known strong gravitational lenses is expected to grow substantially in the next few years. The statistical combination of large samples of lenses has the potential of providing strong constraints on the inner…
The high-magnification gravitational lensing cross-section of a galaxy is enhanced significantly if a baryonic disc is embedded in its dark matter halo. We investigate the effects of a population of such disks on the probability of…
Strong gravitational lenses come in many forms, but are typically divided into two populations: galaxies, and groups and clusters of galaxies. The largest objects in the Universe (i.e. galaxy clusters) are highly irregular and composed of…
We use semi-analytic modelling of the galaxy-cluster population and its strong lensing efficiency to explore how the expected abundance of large gravitational arcs on the sky depends on $\sigma_8$. Our models take all effects into account…
A promising route for revealing the existence of dark matter structures on mass scales smaller than the faintest galaxies is through their effect on strong gravitational lenses. We examine the role of local, lens-proximate clustering in…
Galactic sized gravitational lenses are simulated by combining a cosmological N-body simulation and models for the baryonic component of the galaxy. The lens caustics, critical curves, image locations and magnification ratios are calculated…
To a first approximation, the microlensing phenomenon is achromatic, and great advancement has been achieved in the interpretation of the achromatic signals, which among other achievements has led to the discovery and characterization of…
A small fraction of all quasars are strongly lensed and multiply imaged, with usually a galaxy acting as the main lens. Some, maybe all of these quasars are also affected by microlensing, the effects of stellar mass objects in the lensing…