Micro-images of macro-lensed objects
Author(s)
Weisenbach, Luke
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.
Advisor
Paul L. Schechter.
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The study of gravitational micro-lensing at high optical depth has only rarely involved the close examination of the individual actual micro-images that arise as a result of the phenomenon. We discuss methods that refine on previous work done in the search for micro-images, which have been largely ignored in favor of other methods to study micro-lensing. With the help of magnification maps generated by Herr Prof. Dr. Joachim Wambsganss, we ran simulations that track positions and magnifications of micro-minima as functions of source position. We discuss the breakdown of a commonly used approximation for magnifications near fold caustics. Our results show that the approximation is noticeably broken at a caustic strength-scaled distance of 0.1. The relevance of this breakdown to work done by other authors is briefly examined. We then then discuss a few new results for the statistics of micro-images, deriving a formula for the mean micro-minimum magnification. We present a method for exactly calculating the caustic networks of micro-lensed systems, and calculate probability distributions for the caustic strength for two sets of parameters of interest. We present the creation of videos of the micro-lensing affect for pedagogical purposes. Finally, we briefly examine micro-lensing near macro-caustics and study the motion of micro-images as a point source crosses a macro-caustic.
Description
Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2018. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-80).
Date issued
2018Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of PhysicsPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Physics.