Related papers: Qualitative aspects of quasar microlensing with tw…
We propose a method for detecting gravitational magnification of distant sources, like quasars, due to absorber systems detected in their spectra. We first motivate the use of metal absorption lines rather than Lyman-alpha lines, then we…
We discuss whether one should expect that multiply imaged QSOs can be understood with `simple' lens models which contain a handful of parameters. Whereas for many lens systems such simple mass models yield a remarkably good description of…
We study the lensing magnification effect on background galaxies. Differential magnification due to different magnifications of different source regions of a galaxy will change the lensed composite spectra. The derived properties of the…
Numerical simulations and theoretical studies of the gravitational microlensing effect of a population of small bodies distributed along the line of sight to a compact light source such as a quasar indicate that caustic crossing effects…
Gravitational lensing allows us to probe the structure of matter on a broad range of astronomical scales, and as light from a distant source traverses an intervening galaxy, compact matter such as planets, stars, and black holes act as…
Many distant objects can only be detected, or become more scientifically valuable, if they have been highly magnified by strong gravitational lensing. We use EAGLE and BAHAMAS, two recent cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, to predict…
The strange morphology of the six-component gravitational lens PMN J0134-0931 has resisted explanation. We present the first successful quantitative models for the system, based on the idea that there are two lens galaxies and two…
Gravitational microlensing of quasars by stars in external galaxies can introduce fluctuations in the centroid of the ``point-like'' macro--images. The induced shifts are extremely small, on micro--arcsecond scales, below the limits of…
Despite consistent progress in numerical simulations, the observable properties of galaxy clusters are difficult to predict ab initio. It is therefore important to compare both theoretical and observational results to a direct measure of…
[Abridged] Many current and future astronomical surveys will rely on samples of strong gravitational lens systems to draw conclusions about galaxy mass distributions. We use a new strong lensing pipeline (presented in Paper I of this…
Gravitational microlensing has proven to be a powerful tool in the study of quasars, providing some of the strongest limits on the scales of structure in the central engine. Typically sources are considered to be smoothly varying on some…
Quark mass ratios are expressed within the linear meson model by universal relations involving only the masses and decay constants of the flavored pseudoscalars as well as their wave function renormalization. Quantitative results are in…
We consider filamentary and planar large scale structures as possible refraction channels for electromagnetic radiation coming from cosmological structures. By this hypothesis, it is possible to explain the quasar luminosity distribution…
Flux ratios of multiple images in strong gravitational lensing systems provide a powerful probe of dark matter substructure. Optical flux ratios of lensed quasars are typically affected by stellar microlensing, and thus studies of dark…
In contrast to the converging, achromatic behaviour of axisymmetric gravitational lenses, diverging frequency-dependent lensing occurs from refraction due to a distribution of over-dense axisymmetric plasma along an observer's line of…
Flux magnification is an interesting complement to shear-based lensing measurements, especially at high redshift where sources are harder to resolve. One measures either changes in the source density (magnification bias) or in the shape of…
Context. Observations of the effect of microlensing in gravitationally lensed quasars could potentially be used to study the structure of the source on distance scales down to the size of the supermassive black hole powering the quasar…
We present a novel approach for reconstructing the projected mass distribution of clusters of galaxies from sparse and noisy weak gravitational lensing shear data. The reconstructions are regularised using knowledge gained from numerical…
When there is more than one source of light along the line of sight to a gravitationally lensed object, the characteristics of the observed light curve are influenced by the presence of the light that is not lensed. In this paper we develop…
Gravitational microlensing is a key probe of the nature of dark matter and its distribution on the smallest scales. For many practical purposes, confronting theory to observation requires to model the probability that a light source is…