We present a tool to generate mock quasar microlensing light curves and sample them according to any observing strategy. An updated treatment of the fixed and random velocity components of observer, lens, and source is used, together with a proper alignment with the external shear defining the magnification map caustic orientation. Our tool produces quantitative results on high magnification events and caustic crossings, which we use to study three lensed quasars known to display microlensing, viz. RX J1131-1231, HE 0230-2130, and Q 2237+0305, as they would be monitored by The Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We conclude that depending on the location on the sky, the lens and source redshift, and the caustic network density, the microlensing variability may deviate significantly than the expected $\sim$20-year average time scale (Mosquera & Kochanek 2011, arXiv:1104.2356). We estimate that $\sim300$ high magnification events with $Δ$mag$>1$ mag could potentially be observed by LSST each year. The duration of the majority of high magnification events is between 10 and 100 days, requiring a very high cadence to capture and resolve them. Uniform LSST observing strategies perform the best in recovering microlensing high magnification events. Our web tool can be extended to any instrument and observing strategy, and is freely available as a service at http://gerlumph.swin.edu.au/tools/lsst_generator/, along with all the related code.
Quasar microlensing analyses implicitly generate a model of the variability of the source quasar. The implied source variability may be unrealistic yet its likelihood is generally not evaluated. We used the damped random walk (DRW) model for quasar variability to evaluate the likelihood of the source variability and applied the revised algorithm to a microlensing analysis of the lensed quasar RX J1131-1231. We compared the estimates of the source quasar disk and average lens galaxy stellar mass with and without applying the DRW likelihoods for the source variability model and found no signific…
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) with the Vera Rubin Observatory will provide strong microlensing constraints on dark compact objects (DCOs) in our Galaxy. However, most current forecasts limit their analysis to Primordial Black Holes (PBH). It is unclear how well LSST microlensing will be able to constrain alternative models of DCOs with different Galactic spatial profile distributions at a subdominant DM fraction. In this work, we investigate how well LSST microlensing will constrain spherical or disk-like Galactic spatial distributions of DCOs, taking into account extended observi…
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 measurement relies on the temporal variation of high-magnification caustic crossings which vary on timescales of days to years. Multiwavelength observations provide information from distinct emission regions in the quasar. Through monitoring of these strong gravitational lenses, a full tomographic view can emerge with Astronomical-Unit scale resolution. Work to date h…
We present a mock catalog of gravitationally lensed quasars at $z_\text{qso}<7.5$ with simulated images for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We adopt recent measurements of quasar luminosity functions to model the quasar population, and use the CosmoDC2 mock galaxy catalog to model the deflector galaxies, which successfully reproduces the observed galaxy velocity dispersion functions up to $z_d\sim1.5$. The mock catalog is highly complete for lensed quasars with Einstein radius $θ_E>0\farcs07$ and quasar absolute magnitude $M_{i}<-20$. We estimate that there are $\…
Aims. We study the impact of the parallax on the search for very long timescale microlensing events towards the Magellanic Clouds due to dark massive compact objects within the past MACHO and EROS, the ongoing MOA and OGLE, and the future LSST surveys. We quantify the impact of neglecting this effect on the classical event selection process and also quantify the parallax detectability without the help of follow-up observations.Methods. We define a distance between true events affected by parallax and the closest events without parallax. This distance is used to estimate the probability of miss…
The quadruply lensed quasar HE0435-1223 shows a clear microlensing effect that affects differently the blue and red wings of the H$α$ line profile in its image D. To interpret these observations, and constrain the broad emission line region (BLR) properties, the effect of gravitational microlensing on quasar broad emission line profiles and their underlying continuum has been simulated considering representative BLR models and microlensing magnification maps. The amplification and distortion of the H$α$ line profile, characterized by a set of four indices, can be reproduced by the simulations.…
I present timely spectroscopic follow-up of the newly discovered, quadruply lensed quasar PSOJ0147 from the Pan-STARRS 1 survey. The newly acquired optical spectra with GMOS onboard the Gemini north telescope allow us to pin down the redshifts of both the foreground lensing galaxy and the background lensed quasar to be z=0.572 and 2.341, providing firm basis for cosmography with future high cadence photometric monitoring. I also inspect difference spectra from two of the quasar images, revealing the microlensing effect. Long-term spectroscopic follow-ups will shed lights on the structure of th…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool allowing one to probe the structure of quasars on sub-parsec scale. We report recent results, focusing on the broad absorption and emission line regions. In particular microlensing reveals the intrinsic absorption hidden in the P Cygni-type line profiles observed in the broad absorption line quasar H1413+117, as well as the existence of an extended continuum source. In addition, polarization microlensing provides constraints on the scattering region. In the quasar Q2237+030, microlensing differently distorts the H$α$ and CIV broad emission line pro…
The time delays of gravitationally lensed quasars are generally believed to be unique numbers whose measurement is limited only by the quality of the light curves and the models for the contaminating contribution of gravitational microlensing to the light curves. This belief is incorrect -- gravitational microlensing also produces changes in the actual time delays on the ~day(s) light-crossing time scale of the emission region. This is due to a combination of the inclination of the disk relative to the line of sight and the differential magnification of the temperature fluctuations producing t…
We study the BELs in a sample of 11 gravitationally lensed quasars with at least two epochs of observation to identify intrinsic variability and to disentangle it from microlensing. To improve our statistical significance we also include 15 systems with single-epoch spectra. MgII and CIII] emission lines are only weakly affected by microlensing, but CIV shows strong microlensing in some cases, even for regions of the line core, associated with small projected velocities. However, excluding the strongly microlensed cases, there is a strikingly good match between the red wings of the CIV and CII…
Time-delay cosmography in strongly lensed quasars offer an independent way of measuring the Hubble constant, $H_0$. However, it has been proposed that the combination of microlensing and source-size effects, also known as microlensing time delay can potentially increase the uncertainty in time-delay measurements as well as lead to a biased time delay. In this work, we first investigate how microlensing time delay changes with assumptions on the initial mass function (IMF) and find that the more massive microlenses produce the sharper distributions of microlensing time delays. We also find that…
Evidence of a diffuse, extended continuum source in quasars from the relative sizes of the broad line region and the UV-optical continuum source measured with microlensing
We show that the optical flare event discovered by Graham et al. (2020) towards the active galactic nucleus J1249+3449 is fully consistent with being a quasar microlensing event due to a $\simeq 0.1 M_{\odot}$ star, although other explanations, such as that, mainly supported by Graham et al. (2020), of being the electromagnetic counterpart associated to a binary black hole merger, cannot be completely excluded at present.
The upcoming photometric surveys, such as the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will monitor unprecedented number of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in a decade long campaign. Motivated by the science goals of LSST, which includes the harnessing of broadband light curves of AGN for photometric reverberation mapping (PhotoRM), we implement the existing formalism to estimate the lagged response of the emission line flux to the continuum variability using only mutli-band photometric light curves. We test the PhotoRM method on a set of 19 artificial light curves simulated usi…
We present a measurement of the accretion disk size of the quadruple lensed quasar HE 0435-1223 from well-sampled 13-yr COSMOGRAIL optical light curves. Using accurate time delays for the images A, B, C, and D, we modeled and removed the intrinsic quasar variability, and found microlensing events of amplitude up to 0.6, 0.4, and 0.5 mag in the images A, C and D respectively. From the statistics of microlensing magnifications in these images we use Bayesian methods to estimate the size of the quasar accretion disk. We have inferred the half-light radius for the accretion disk using two differen…
Previously, planets have been detected only in the Milky Way galaxy. Here, we show that quasar microlensing provides a means to probe extragalactic planets in the lens galaxy, by studying the microlensing properties of emission close to the event horizon of the supermassive black hole of the background quasar, using the current generation telescopes. We show that a population of unbound planets between stars with masses ranging from Moon to Jupiter masses is needed to explain the frequent Fek line energy shifts observed in the gravitationally lensed quasar RXJ1131-1231 at a lens redshift of $z…
We have obtained spectropolarimetric observations of the four images of the gravitationally lensed broad absorption line quasar H1413+117. The polarization of the microlensed image D is significantly different both in the continuum and in the broad lines from the polarization of image A which is essentially unaffected by microlensing. The observations suggest that the continuum is scattered off two regions spatially separated and producing roughly perpendicular polarizations. These results are compatible with a model in which the microlensed polarized continuum comes from a compact region loca…
In the near future, the arrival of new surveys promises a significant increment in the number of quasars (QSO) at large redshift ranges. This will help to constrain the dark energy models using quasars. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will cover over 10 million QSO in six photometric bands during its 10-year run. QSO will be monitored and subsequently analysed using the photometric reverberation mapping technique. Oncoming LSST data will decrease the uncertainties in the dark energy determination using reverberating--mapped sources, particularly at high redshifts. We present the fir…
The effect of gravitational Faraday rotation was predicted in the 1950s, but there is currently no practical method for measuring this effect. Measuring this effect is important because it will provide new evidence for correctness of general relativity, in particular, in the strong field limit. We predict that the observed degree and angle of the X-ray polarization of a cosmologically distant quasar microlensed by the random star field in a foreground galaxy or cluster lens vary rapidly and concurrently with flux during caustic-crossing events using the first simulation of quasar X-ray microle…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool to search for a population of invisible black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way (MW), including isolated BHs and binary BHs at wide orbits that are complementary to gravitational wave observations. By monitoring highly populated regions of source stars like the MW bulge region, one can pursue microlensing events due to these BHs. We find that if BHs have a Salpeter-like mass function extended beyond $30M_\odot$ and a similar velocity and spatial structure to stars in the Galactic bulge and disk regions, the BH population is a dominant source of the micr…
We compare the microlensing-based continuum emission region size measurements in a sample of 15 gravitationally lensed quasars with estimates of luminosity-based thin disk sizes to constrain the temperature profile of the quasar continuum accretion region. If we adopt the standard thin disk model, we find a significant discrepancy between sizes estimated using the luminosity and those measured by microlensing of $\log(r_{L}/r_μ)=-0.57\pm0.08\,\text{dex}$. If quasar continuum sources are simple, optically thick accretion disks with a generalized temperature profile $T(r) \propto r^{-β}$, the di…
A doubly-peaked quasar microlensing event in the lensed Twin Quasar Q0957+561 A,B (Colley and Schild 2003) is analysed within several lensing models. In the most realistic model a lens resolves in image B the ellipse shaped, bright inner rim of the quasar's accretion disk, intersecting it twice. This lens weighs 0.5 Earth mass and is located inside the Galaxy, at 3 kpc distance. During the passing, it partially occults the source, which allows to describe it as a primordial gas cloud of 1.4 Solar radius and 17 K temperature, in accordance with the theory of Gravitational Hydrodynamics. Lensing…
We study three high magnification microlensing events, generally recognized as probable caustic crossings, in the optical light curves of the multiply imaged quasar Q 2237+0305. We model the light curve of each event as the convolution of a standard thin disk luminosity profile with a straight fold caustic. We also allow for a linear gradient that can account for an additional varying background effect of microlensing. This model not only matches noticeably well the global shape of each of the three independent microlensing events but also gives remarkably similar estimates for the disk size p…
When an image of a strongly lensed quasar is microlensed, the different components of its spectrum are expected to be differentially magnified owing to the different sizes of the corresponding emitting region. Chromatic changes are expected to be observed in the continuum while the emission lines should be deformed as a function of the size, geometry and kinematics of the regions from which they originate. Microlensing of the emission lines has been reported only in a handful of systems so far. In this paper we search for microlensing deformations of the optical spectra of pairs of images in 1…
Recent studies have shown that line profile distortions are commonly observed in gravitationally lensed quasar spectra. We investigate the effect of gravitational microlensing on quasar broad emission line profiles and their underlying continuum, combining the emission from simple representative BLR models with generic microlensing magnification maps. Specifically, we considered Keplerian disk, polar, and equatorial wind BLR models of various sizes. The effect of microlensing has been quantified with four observables: $μ^{BLR}$, the total magnification of the broad emission line; $μ^{cont}$, t…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool for probing the inner structure of distant quasars. In this context, we have obtained spectropolarimetric observations of the two images of the broad absorption line (BAL) quasar SDSSJ081830.46+060138.0 (J0818+0601) at redshift $z \simeq$ 2.35. We first show that J0818+0601 is actually gravitationally lensed, and not a binary quasar. A strong absorption system detected at $z$ = 1.0065$\pm$0.0002 is possibly due to the lensing galaxy. Microlensing is observed in one image and it magnifies the emission lines, the continuum, and the BALs differently. …
We aim to study the structure and kinematics of the broad line region (BLR) of a sample of 27 gravitationally lensed quasars with up to five different epochs of observation. This sample is composed of ~100 spectra from the literature plus 22 unpublished spectra of 11 systems. We measure the magnitude differences in the broad emission line (BEL) wings and statistically model the distribution of microlensing magnifications to determine a maximum likelihood estimate for the sizes of the C IV, C III], and Mg II emitting regions. The BELs in lensed quasars are expected to be magnified differently o…
The idea that dark matter can be made of intermediate-mass primordial black holes in the $10M_\odot \lesssim M \lesssim 200M_\odot$ range has recently been reconsidered, particularly in the light of the detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment. The existence of even a small fraction of dark matter in black holes should nevertheless result in noticeable quasar gravitational microlensing. Quasar microlensing is sensitive to any type of compact objects in the lens galaxy, to their abundance, and to their mass. We have analyzed optical and X-ray microlensing data from 24 gravitation…
We present eight monitoring seasons of the four brightest images of the gravitational lens SDSS J1004+4112 observed between December 2003 and October 2010. Using measured time delays for the images A, B and C and the model predicted time delay for image D we have removed the intrinsic quasar variability, finding microlensing events of about 0.5 and 0.7 mag of amplitude in the images C and D. From the statistics of microlensing amplitudes in images A, C, and D, we have inferred the half-light radius (at λ rest = 2407 Å) for the accretion disk using two different methods, $R_{1/2}=8.7^{+18.5}_{-…
Using infrared spectra of the z = 1.693 quadruply lensed quasar HE0435-1223 acquired in 2009 with the spectrograph SINFONI at the ESO Very Large Telescope, we have detected a clear microlensing effect in images A and D. While microlensing affects the blue and red wings of the Hα line profile in image D very differently, it de-magnifies the line core in image A. The combination of these different effects sets constraints on the line-emitting region; these constraints suggest that a rotating ring is at the origin of the Hα line. Visible spectra obtained in 2004 and 2012 indicate that the MgII li…
We show that quasar microlensing magnification statistics induced by a population of point microlenses distributed according to a mass-spectrum can be very well approximated by that of a single-mass, "monochromatic", population. When the spatial resolution (physically defined by the source size) is small as compared with the Einstein radius, the mass of the monochromatic population matches the geometric mean of the mass-spectrum. Otherwise, the best-fit mass can be larger. Taking into account the degeneracy with the geometric mean, the interpretation of quasar microlensing observations under t…
Quasar microlensing flux ratios are used to unveil properties of the lenses in large collections of lensed quasars, like the ones expected to be produced by the Euclid survey. This is achieved by using the direct survey products, without any (expensive) follow-up observations or monitoring. First, the theoretical flux ratio distribution of samples of hundreds of mock quasar lenses is calculated for different Initial Mass Functions (IMFs) and Sersic radial profiles for the lens compact matter distribution. Then, mock observations are created and compared to the models to recover the underlying …
An LSST-like survey of the Galactic plane (deep images every 3-4 days) could probe the Galactic distribution of planets by two distinct methods: gravitational microlensing of planets beyond the snow line and transits by planets very close to their hosts. The survey would identify over 250 disk-lens/disk-source microlensing events per year that peak at r<19, including 10% reaching the high magnification A>100 that makes them especially sensitive to planets. Intensive followup of these events would be required to find planets, similar to what is done presently for Galactic bulge microlensing. Th…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool to probe the inner structure of strongly lensed quasars and to constrain parameters of the stellar mass function of lens galaxies. This is done by analysing microlensing light curves between the multiple images of strongly lensed quasars, under the influence of three main variable components: 1- the continuum flux of the source, 2- microlensing by stars in the lens galaxy and 3- reverberation of the continuum by the Broad Line Region (BLR). The latter, ignored by state-of-the-art microlensing techniques, can introduce high-frequency variations whic…
Observations of several gravitationally microlensed quasars in X-rays revealed variations in the profile of the iron K$α$ line in the course of microlensing events. We explore the effect by simulating a microlensing caustic crossing a spatially resolved model of emission from a thin accretion disk around a Kerr black hole. We demonstrate the sequence of spectral changes during the event, in particular the appearance of additional peaks and edges in the line profile due to microlensing. We trace the origin of these features to points on the disk, at which the total energy shift ($g$-factor) con…
We present a new approach in the study of the Initial Mass function (IMF) in external galaxies based on quasar microlensing observations. We use measurements of quasar microlensing magnifications in 24 lensed quasars to estimate the average mass of the stellar population in the lens galaxies without any a priori assumption on the shape of the IMF. The estimated mean mass of the stars is $\langle M \rangle =0.16^{+0.05}_{-0.08} M_\odot$ (at 68\% confidence level). We use this average mass to put constraints into two important parameters characterizing the IMF of lens galaxies: the low-mass slop…
The event rate and the efficiency of mass estimation for free-floating planet (FFP) microlensing events were determined from the simulation of the simultaneous parallax observations by Euclid, WFIRST, and LSST. The stellar population from the Besançon Galactic model toward $(l, b)=(1^{\circ},-1.^{\circ}75)$ was applied to our 3D microlensing model, and 30,000 parallax observations were simulated for each following FFP lens masses: Jupiter-mass, Neptune-mass, and Earth-mass assuming the population of one FFP per star. The interstellar dust, unresolved stellar background, nearby star blending we…
In the near future, new surveys promise a significant increase in the number of quasars (QSO) at large redshifts. This will help to constrain the dark energy models using quasars. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will cover over 10 million QSO in six photometric bands during its 10-year run. QSO will be monitored and subsequently analyzed using the photometric reverberation mapping (RM) technique. In low-redshift quasars, the combination of reverberation-mapped and spectroscopic results have provided important progress. However, there are still some facts which have to be taken into …
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 component and how much is composed of compact masses (e.g., stars, stellar remnants, primordial black holes, CDM sub-halos, and planets). Future optical surveys will discover hundreds to thousands of quadruply lensed quasars, and sensitive X-ray observations will unambiguously determine the ratio of smooth to clumpy matter at specific locations in the lensing gal…
We use single-epoch spectroscopy of three gravitationally lensed quasars, HE0435-1223, WFI2033-4723, and HE2149-2745, to study their inner structure (BLR and continuum source). We detect microlensing-induced magnification in the wings of the broad emission lines of two of the systems (HE0435-1223 and WFI2033-4723). In the case of WFI2033-4723, microlensing affects two "bumps" in the spectra which are almost symmetrically arranged on the blue (coincident with an AlIII emission line) and red wings of CIII]. These match the typical double-peaked profile that follows from disk kinematics. The pres…
Size and kinematics of the low-ionization broad emission line region from microlensing-induced line profile distortions in gravitationally lensed quasars
We use thirteen seasons of R-band photometry from the 1.2m Leonard Euler Swiss Telescope at La Silla to examine microlensing variability in the quadruply-imaged lensed quasar WFI 2026-4536. The lightcurves exhibit ${\sim}\,0.2\,\text{mag}$ of uncorrelated variability across all epochs and a prominent single feature of ${\sim}\,0.1\,\text{mag}$ within a single season. We analyze this variability to constrain the size of the quasar's accretion disk. Adopting a nominal inclination of 60$^\text{o}$, we find an accretion disk scale radius of $\log(r_s/\text{cm}) = 15.74^{+0.34}_{-0.29}$ at a rest-f…
We present an $r$--band photometric monitoring of the two images A and B of the gravitationally lensed quasar SDSS J1442+4055 using the Liverpool Telescope (LT). From the LT light curves between 2015 December and 2018 August, we derive at once a time delay of 25.0 $\pm$ 1.5 days (1$σ$ confidence interval; A is leading) and microlensing magnification gradients below 10$^{-4}$ mag day$^{-1}$. The delay interval is not expected to be affected by an appreciable microlensing--induced bias, so it can be used to estimate cosmological parameters. This paper also focuses on new Gran Telescopio Canarias…
We investigate the kinematics and ionization structure of the broad emission line region of the gravitationally lensed quasar QSO2237+0305 (the Einstein cross) using differential microlensing in the high- and low-ionization broad emission lines. We combine visible and near-infrared spectra of the four images of the lensed quasar and detect a large-amplitude microlensing effect distorting the high-ionization CIV and low-ionization H$α$ line profiles in image A. While microlensing only magnifies the red wing of the Balmer line, it symmetrically magnifies the wings of the CIV emission line. Given…
Owing to the advent of large area photometric surveys, the possibility to use broad band photometric data, instead of spectra, to measure the size of the broad line region of active galactic nuclei, has raised a large interest. We describe here a new method using time-delay lensed quasars where one or several images are affected by microlensing due to stars in the lensing galaxy. Because microlensing decreases (or increases) the flux of the continuum compared to the broad line region, it changes the contrast between these two emission components. We show that this effect can be used to effecti…
We introduce the use of the Fast Multipole Method (FMM) to speed up gravitational lensing ray tracing calculations. The method allows very fast calculation of ray deflections when a large number of deflectors, $N_*$, is involved, while keeping rigorous control on the errors. In particular, we apply this method, in combination with the Inverse Polygon Mapping technique (IPM), to quasar microlensing to generate microlensing magnification maps with very high workloads (high magnification, large size and/or high resolution) that require a very large number of deflectors. Using, FMM-IPM, the comput…
