Related papers: Gravitational Lensing by Dark Matter Caustics
We find a simple expression for critical curves of a binary gravitational lens. On the basis of this, we present a parametric representation of such curves. The caustics can also be expressed with the same parameterization. The present…
If an extended source, such as a galaxy, is gravitationally lensed by a massive object in the foreground, the lensing distorts the observed image. It is straightforward to simulate what the observed image would be for a particular lens and…
We review the theoretical aspects of gravitational lensing by black holes, and discuss the perspectives for realistic observations. We will first treat lensing by spherically symmetric black holes, in which the formation of infinite…
Gravitational lensing of background compact objects like active galactic nuclei and quasars, by extended intermediate mass lenses such as globular clusters and and dark matter clumps with masses 10^5 - 10^8 M_sun, is considered. It is shown…
Gravitational lensing can amplify the apparent brightness of distant sources. Images that are highly magnified are often part of multiply-imaged systems, but we consider the possibility of having large magnifications without additional…
Cold dark matter (CDM) constitutes most of the matter in the Universe. The interplay between dark and luminous matter in dense cosmic environments like galaxy clusters is studied theoretically using cosmological simulations. Observed…
We show how our theory of large-scale gravitational quantization explains the large angle gravitational lensing by galaxies without requiring "dark matter". A galaxy is treated as a collective system of billions of stars in each…
By directly probing mass distributions, gravitational lensing offers several new tests of the CDM paradigm. Lens statistics place upper limits on the dark matter content of elliptical galaxies. Galaxies built from CDM mass distributions are…
One of the most challenging open questions in physics today is discovering the nature of dark matter. In this work we study the imaging formation in dark matter (DM) halos due to an external light source using some DM profiles for…
We investigate the caustic topologies for binary gravitational lenses made up of two objects whose gravitational potential declines as $1/r^n$. With $n<1$ this corresponds to power-law dust distributions like the singular isothermal sphere.…
The statistics of gravitational lensing can provide us with a very powerful probe of the mass distribution of matter in the universe. By comparing predicted strong lensing probabilities with observations, we can test the mass distribution…
We consider small-scale spheroidal clusters of weakly interacting massive particles in our Galaxy as non-compact gravitational microlenses and predict the appearance of caustics in the plane of a lensed source. The crossing of these…
Gravitational lensing has become one of the most powerful tools available for investigating the 'dark side' of the universe. Cosmological strong gravitational lensing, in particular, probes the properties of the dense cores of dark matter…
With future wide and deep cosmological sky surveys, a large number of gravitationally lensed, multiply imaged systems will be found. In addition to multiply imaged galaxies and quasars, sources will include transient events like supernovae…
Gravitational lensing is one of a number of methods used to probe the distribution of dark mass in the Universe. On galactic scales, complementary techniques include the use of stellar kinematics, kinematics and morphology of the neutral…
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…
It has been shown by Paczy\'nski that gravitational microlensing is potentially a useful method for detecting the dark constituents of the halo of our galaxy, if their mass lies in the approximate domain $10^{-6} < M/M_{\odot} < 10^{-1}$.…
Calculations are presented detailing the gravitational lens diffraction due to the steep brightness gradient of the limb of a stellar source. The lensing case studied is the fold caustic crossing. The limb diffraction signal greatly exceeds…
The images of relativistic jets from extragalactic sources produced by gravitational lensing by galaxies with different mass surface density distributions are modeled. In particular, the following models of the gravitational lens mass…
If modified gravity holds, but the weak lensing analysis is done in the standard way, one finds that dark matter halos have peculiar shapes, not following the standard Navarro-Frenk-White profiles, and are fully predictable from the…