Related papers: Qualitative aspects of quasar microlensing with tw…
Weak gravitational lensing surveys are rapidly becoming important tools to probe directly the mass density fluctuations in the universe and its background dynamics. Earlier studies have shown that it is possible to model the statistics of…
Recently it has been suggested that the majority of dark matter in the universe resides in the form of Jupiter mass black holes distributed cosmologically. This population makes itself apparent by microlensing high redshift quasars and…
We present a detailed study of the effects of gravitational microlensing on compact and distant $\gamma$-ray blazars. These objects have $\gamma$-ray emitting regions which are small enough as to be affected by microlensing effects produced…
Lens magnification by galaxy clusters induces characteristic spatial variations in the number counts of background sources, amplifying their observed fluxes and expanding the area of sky, the net effect of which, known as magnification…
Weak gravitational lensing has become an important method to determine the masses of galaxy clusters. The intrinsic shapes of the galaxies are a dominant source of uncertainty, but there are other limitations to the precision that can be…
Follow the big stars! I review the theory of detection and parameter measurement of planetary systems by follow-up observations of ongoing microlensing events. Two parameters can generically be measured from the event itself: the…
The observational limitations of astronomical surveys lead to significant statistical inference challenges. One such challenge is the estimation of luminosity functions given redshift $z$ and absolute magnitude $M$ measurements from an…
Gravitational lensing causes a correlation between a population of foreground large-scale structures and the observed number density of the background distant galaxies as a consequence of the flux magnification and the lensing area…
During microlensing events with a small impact parameter, the amplification of the source flux is sensitive to the surface brightness distribution of the source star. Such events provide a means for studying the surface structure of target…
We investigate the extent to which cosmic size magnification may be used to com- plement cosmic shear in weak gravitational lensing surveys, with a view to obtaining high-precision estimates of cosmological parameters. Using simulated…
The microlensing signal in the light curves of gravitationally lensed quasars can shed light on the dark matter (DM) composition in their lensing galaxies. Here, we investigate a sample of six lensed quasars from the most recent and best…
Quasar pairs are either physically distinct binary quasars or the result of gravitational lensing. The majority of known pairs are in fact lenses, with a few confirmed as binaries, leaving a population of objects that have not yet been…
The associations of the angular positions of background quasars with foreground galaxies, clusters of galaxies and quasars are often attributed to the statistical lensing by gravitational potentials of the matter along the lines of sight,…
Recent estimates of the scale of structures at the heart of quasars suggest that the region responsible for the broad line emission are smaller than previously thought. With this revision of scale, the broad line region is amenable to the…
The population of strong lensing galaxies is a sub-set of intermediate-redshift massive galaxies, whose population-level properties are not yet well understood. In the near future, thousands of multiply imaged systems are expected to be…
We present a rigorous, detailed study of the generic, quantitative properties of gravitational microlensing near cusp catastrophes. We derive explicit formulas for the total magnification and centroid of the images created for sources…
The scatter in the apparent magnitude of type Ia supernovae induced by stochastic gravitational lensing is highly dependent on the nonlinear growth of cosmological structure. In this paper, we show that such a dependence can potentially be…
We develop an algorithm for the reconstruction of the two-dimensional mass distribution of a gravitational lens from the observable distortion of background galaxies. From the measured reduced shear, the lens mapping is obtained, from which…
Strongly lensed systems with peculiar configurations allow us to probe the local properties of the deflecting lens mass while simultaneously testing general profile assumptions. The quasar HE0230$-$2130 is lensed by two galaxies at similar…
The recent detection of gravitational waves indicates that stellar-mass black hole binaries are likely to be a key population of sources for forthcoming observations. With future upgrades, ground-based detectors could detect merging black…