Related papers: Perturbative analysis in planetary gravitational l…
In this article we review the astrophysical application of gravitational microlensing. After introducing the history of gravitational lensing, we present the key equations and concept of microlensing. The most frequent microlensing events…
Specially-designed microlensing searches, some of which have been underway for several years, are sensitive to extrasolar planets orbiting the most common stars in our Galaxy. Microlensing is particularly well-suited to the detection of…
Characterization of microlensing planets requires modeling of observed light curves including many parameters. Studying the dependency of the pattern of light curves on the lensing parameters and the correlations between the parameters is…
We revisit the gravitational lensing phenomenon using a new visualization technique. It consists in projecting the observers sky into the source plane, what gives rise to a folded and stretched surface. This provides a clear graphical tool…
Gravitational microlensing has proved to be a versatile astrophysical tool. Recently, the question of whether higher order relativistic corrections can influence the observable properties of microlensing has been addressed. This letter…
We investigate the chance of detecting proto-planetary or debris disks in stars that induce microlensing events (lenses). The modification of the light curves shapes due to occultation and extinction by the disks as well as the additional…
The laws of geometric optics and their corrections are derived for scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational waves propagating in generic curved spacetimes. Local peeling-type results are obtained, where different components of…
Microlensings events are predicted for the light coming from cosmological sources. In addition to the microlensing due to gravitation lensing, microlensing produced also by refraction of light due to either ionized, or not, gas clouds can…
Gravitational lensing of distant objects caused by gravitational tidal forces from inhomogeneities in the universe is weak in most cases, but it is noticed that it gives a great deal of information about the universe, especially regarding…
To improve the planet detection efficiency, current planetary microlensing experiments are focused on high-magnification events searching for planetary signals near the peak of lensing light curves. However, it is known that central…
We propose a direct method to detect close-in giant planets orbiting stars in the Galactic bulge. This method uses caustic-crossing binary microlensing events discovered by survey teams monitoring the bulge to measure light from a planet…
Just two of 10 extrasolar planets found by microlensing have been detected by the planetary caustic despite the higher probability of planet detection relative to the central caustic which has been responsible for four extrasolar planet…
It is standard practice to study the lensing of gravitational waves (GW) using the geometric optics regime. However, in many astrophysical configurations this regime breaks down as the wavelength becomes comparable to the Schwarzschild…
We study the wave optics features of gravitational microlensing by a binary lens composed of a planet and a parent star. In this system, the source star near the caustic line produces a pair of images in which they can play the role of…
Among the 25 planetary systems detected up to now by gravitational microlensing, there are two cases of a star with two planets, and two cases of a binary star with a planet. Other, yet undetected types of triple lenses include triple stars…
The mathematical theory of gravitational lensing has revealed many generic and global properties. Beginning with multiple imaging, we review Morse-theoretic image counting formulas and lower bound results, and complex-algebraic upper bounds…
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…
Gravitational lensing magnification is maximal around caustics. At these source locations, an incoming wave from a point source would formally experience an infinite amplification in the high-frequency or geometric optics limit. This…
Microlensing of gravitationally lensed quasars by the stars in the foreground lens galaxy can be used to probe the nature of dark matter, to determine the mean stellar mass in the lens galaxy, and to measure the internal structure of quasar…
Gravitational microlensing is known for baryoninc dark matter searches. Here we show that microlensing also provides a unique tool for the detection of low mass planets (such as earths and neptunes) from the ground. A planetary system forms…