Related papers: Turning AGN Microlensing From a Curiosity Into a T…
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,…
Gravitational microlensing is a very useful tool for investigating the innermost part of lensed quasars, especially for studying a relativistic accretion disk around a massive black hole (BH) supposed to exist in a quasar's center. Here we…
Variability in gravitationally lensed quasars can be due to intrinsic fluctuations of the quasar or due to ``microlensing'' by compact objects along the line of sight. If disentangled from each other, microlens-induced variability can be…
Microlensing by stars within distant galaxies acting as strong gravitational lenses of multiply-imaged quasars, provides a unique and direct measurement of the internal structure of the lensed quasar on nano-arcsecond scales. The…
Microlensing studies of quasars can reveal dark matter lumps over a broad mass spectrum; we highlight the importance of monitoring quasars which are seen through the halos of low-redshift galaxies. For these configurations microlensing by…
Gravitational microlensing of planetary-mass objects (or "nanolensing", as it has been termed) can be used to probe the distribution of mass in a galaxy that is acting as a gravitational lens. Microlensing and nanolensing light curve…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool for probing the physical properties of quasar accretion disks and properties of the lens galaxy such as its dark matter fraction and mean stellar mass. Unfortunately the number of lensed quasars…
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…
Microlensing is a powerful technique which can be used to study the continuum and the broad line emitting regions in distant AGNs. After a brief description of the methods and required data, we present recent applications of this technique.…
Cosmological gravitational microlensing is a useful technique for understanding the structure of the inner parts of a quasar, especially the accretion disk and the central supermassive black hole. So far, most of the cosmological…
Optical and X-ray observations of strongly gravitationally lensed quasars (especially when four separate images of the quasar are produced) determine not only the amount of matter in the lensing galaxy but also how much is in a smooth…
We present a joint estimate of the stellar/dark matter mass fraction in lens galaxies and the average size of the accretion disk of lensed quasars from microlensing measurements of 27 quasar image pairs seen through 19 lens galaxies. The…
This paper presents an investigation into the gravitational microlensing of quasars by stars and stellar remnants in the Milky Way. We present predictions for the all-sky microlensing optical depth, time-scale distributions and event rates…
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…
Gravitational microlensing is a unique probe of the stellar content in strong lens galaxies. Flux ratio anomalies from gravitationally lensed supernovae (glSNe), just like lensed quasars, can be used to constrain the stellar mass fractions…
Over the past decade, microlensing has developed into a powerful tool to study stellar astrophysics, especially stellar atmospheres, stellar masses, and binarity. I review this progress. Stellar atmospheres can be probed whenever the source…
Gravitational microlensing has proven to be a powerful probe of both the structure at the heart of quasars and the mass function of compact objects in foreground lenses. This paper examines the potential of gravitational microlensing in…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…
Microlensing promises to be a powerful tool for studying distant galaxies and quasars. As the data and models improve, there are systematic effects that need to be explored. Quasar continuum and broad-line regions may respond differently to…
The aim of this paper is to investigate the claim that stars in the lensing galaxy of a gravitationally lensed quasar system can always account for the observed microlensing of the individual quasar images. A small sample of gravitationally…