Related papers: Line Caustic Microlensing and Limb Darkening
Many synoptic surveys are observing large parts of the sky multiple times. The resulting lightcurves provide a wonderful window to the dynamic nature of the universe. However, there are many significant challenges in analyzing these light…
Microlensing is a powerful tool for discovering cold exoplanets, and the The Roman Space Telescope microlensing survey will discover over 1000 such planets. Rapid, automated classification of Roman's microlensing events can be used to…
The current searches for microlensing events towards the galactic bulge can be used to detect planets around the lensing stars. Their effect is a short-term modulation on the smooth lightcurve produced by the main lensing star. Current and…
If a light-emitting star is responsible for a gravitational microlensing event, the lens can be characterized by analyzing the blended light from the lens. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of characterizing lenses by using this…
We present an efficient method for computing lightcurves of an elliptical source which is microlensed by a point mass. The amplification of an extended source involves a two-dimensional integral over its surface brightness distribution. We…
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…
Stellar limb darkening is the observed variation in brightness of a star between its centre and edge (or limb) when viewed in the plane of the sky. Stellar brightness is maximal at the centre and then decreases radially and monotonically…
We consider the signature and detectability of gravitational microlensing of distant quasars by cosmic strings. Because of the simple image configuration such events will have a characteristic light curve, in which a source would appear to…
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…
One of the main endeavors of the field of exoplanetary sciences is the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres on a population level. The current method of choice to accomplish this task is transmission spectroscopy, where the apparent…
Recent discoveries of circumbinary planets in Kepler data show that there is a viable channel of planet formation around binary main sequence stars. Motivated by these discoveries, we have investigated the caustic structures and…
Inaccurate limb-darkening models can be a significant source of error in the analysis of the light curves for transiting exoplanet and eclipsing binary star systems. To test the accuracy of published limb-darkening models, I have compared…
In a microlensing event, a large magnification occurs at caustic crossing and provides an opportunity to obtain a stronger signal associated with the object. In this paper we study the possibility of magnetic field detection in a…
Recent surveys monitoring millions of light curves of resolved stars in the LMC have discovered several microlensing events. Unresolved stars could however significantly contribute to the microlensing rate towards the LMC. Monitoring…
Gravitational microlensing is a new technique for studying the surfaces of distant stars. A point mass lens, usually a low-mass star from the disk, will typically resolve the surface of a red giant in the Galactic bulge, as well as amplify…
Studies of the inner regions of micro-lensed AGN during caustic crossing events have often relied upon the approximation that the magnification near a fold caustic is inversely proportional to the square root of the source-caustic distance.…
We have developed a universal approach to compute accurately the brightness of eclipsing binary systems during the transit of a planet in front of the stellar disk. This approach is uniform for all values of the system parameters and…
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…
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…
This paper presents first results on the line profile shapes from a circumstellar envelope in bulk motion as modified by a microlensing event. Only geometrically and optically thin spherical shells in uniform expansion or rotation are…