Michal Jaroszynski

A jovian-mass planet in microlensing event OGLE-2005-BLG-071

We report the discovery of a several-Jupiter mass planetary companion to the primary lens star in microlensing event OGLE-2005-BLG-071. Precise (<1%) photometry at the peak of the event yields an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio detection of a deviation from the light curve expected from an isolated lens. The planetary character of this deviation is easily and unambiguously discernible from the gross features of the light curve. Detailed modeling yields a tightly-constrained planet-star mass ratio of q=m_p/M=0.0071+/-0.0003. This is the second robust detection of a planet with microlensing, demonstrating that the technique itself is viable and that planets are not rare in the systems probed by microlensing, which typically lie several kpc toward the Galactic center.

Leaving the innermost stable circular orbit: the inner edge of a black-hole accretion disk at various luminosities

The “radiation inner edge” of an accretion disk is defined as the inner boundary of the region from which most of the luminosity emerges. Similarly, the “reflection edge” is the smallest radius capable of producing a significant X-ray reflection of the fluorescent iron line. For black hole accretion disks with very sub-Eddington luminosities these and all other “inner edges” coexist at the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO). Thus, in this case, one may rightly consider ISCO as the unique inner edge of the black hole accretion disk. However, even at moderate luminosities, there is no such unique inner edge because differently defined edges are located at different places. Several of them are significantly closer to the black hole than ISCO. These differences grow with the increasing luminosity. For nearly Eddington luminosities, they are so huge that the notion of the inner edge loses all practical significance.

Weak gravitational lensing due to large-scale structure of the universe

The effect of the large-scale structure of the universe on the propagation of light rays is studied. The development of the large-scale density fluctuations in the omega = 1 universe is calculated within the cold dark matter scenario using a smooth particle approximation. The propagation of about 10 to the 6th random light rays between the redshift z = 5 and the observer was followed. It is found that the effect of shear is negligible, and the amplification of single images is dominated by the matter in the beam. The spread of amplifications is very small. Therefore, the filled-beam approximation is very good for studies of strong lensing by galaxies or clusters of galaxies. In the simulation, the column density was averaged over a comoving area of approximately (1/h Mpc)-squared. No case of a strong gravitational lensing was found, i.e., no over-focused image that would suggest that a few images might be present. Therefore, the large-scale structure of the universe as it is presently known does not produce multiple images with gravitational lensing on a scale larger than clusters of galaxies. 23 refs.

Repeating microlensing events in the OGLE data

Microlensing events are usually selected among single-peaked non-repeating light curves in order to avoid confusion with variable stars. However, a microlensing event may exhibit a second microlensing brightening episode when the source or/and the lens is a binary system. A careful analysis of these repeating events provides an independent way to study the statistics of wide binary stars and to detect extrasolar planets. Previous theoretical studies predicted that 0.5-2 per cent of events should repeat due to wide binary lenses. We present a systematic search for such events in about 4000 light curves of microlensing candidates detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) towards the Galactic bulge from 1992 to 2007. The search reveals a total of 19 repeating candidates, with six clearly due to a wide binary lens. As a by-product, we find that 64 events (∼2 per cent of the total OGLE-III sample) have been misclassified as microlensing; these misclassified events are mostly nova or other types of eruptive stars. The number and importance of repeating events will increase considerably when the next-generation wide-field microlensing experiments become fully operational in the future.

Predicting the second caustic crossing in binary microlensing events

We fit binary lens models to the data covering the initial part of real microlensing events in an attempt to predict the time of the second caustic crossing. We use approximations during the initial search through the parameter space for light curves that roughly match the observed ones. Exact methods for calculating the lens magnification of an extended source are used when we refine our best initial models. Our calculations show that the reliable prediction of the second crossing can only be made very late, when the light curve has risen appreciably after the minimum between the two caustic crossings. The best observational strategy is therefore to sample as frequently as possible once the light curve starts to rise after the minimum.

The influence of the matter along the line of sight and in the lens environment on the strong gravitational lensing

We investigate the influence of the matter along the line of sight and in the lens environment on the image configurations, relative time delays, and the resulting models of strong gravitational lensing. The distribution of matter in space and properties of gravitationally bound haloes are based on the Millennium Simulation. In our numerical experiments we consider isolated lens in a uniform universe model and the same lens surrounded by close neighbours and/or objects close to the line of sight which gives four different descriptions of the light propagation. We compare the results of the lens modeling which neglects effects of the environment and line of sight, when applied to image configurations resulting from approaches partially or fully taking into account these effects. We show that for a source at the redshift z=2 the effects are indeed important and may prevent successful fitting of lens models in a substantial part of simulated image configurations, especially when the relative time delays are taken into account. To have good constraints on the models we limit ourselves to configurations of four images. We consider eighty lenses and large number of source positions in each case. The influence of the lens neighbourhood and the line of sight introduces the spread into the fitted values of the deflection angles which translates into the spread in the lens velocity dispersion of 4 per cent. Similarly for the lens axis ratio we get the spread of 10 per cent and for the Hubbles constant of 6 per cent. When averaged over all lenses and all image configurations considered, the median fitted values of the parameters (including the Hubbles constant) do not differ more than 1 per cent from their values used in simulations.

OGLE‐2009‐BLG‐023/MOA‐2009‐BLG‐028: characterization of a binary microlensing event based on survey data

We report the result of the analysis of the light curve of a caustic-crossing binary-lens microlensing event OGLE-2009-BLG-023/MOA-2009-BLG-028. Even though the event was observed solely by survey experiments, we could uniquely determine the mass of the lens and distance to it by simultaneously measuring the Einstein radius and lens parallax. From this, we find that the lens system is composed of M-type dwarfs with masses (0.50 ± 0.07) and (0.15 ± 0.02) M ⊙ located in the Galactic disc with a distance of ∼1.8 kpc toward the Galactic bulge direction. The event demonstrates that physical lens parameters of binary-lens events can be routinely determined from future high-cadence lensing surveys and thus microlensing can provide a new way to study Galactic binaries.

The influence of weak lensing on measurements of the Hubble constant with quad-image gravitational lenses

We investigate the influence of matter along the line of sight and in the strong lens vicinity on the properties of quad image configurations and on the measurements of the Hubble constant (H0). We use simulations of light propagation in a nonuniform universe model with the distribution of matter in space based on the data from Millennium Simulation. For a given strong lens and haloes in its environment we model the matter distribution along the line of sight many times, using different combinations of precomputed deflection maps representing subsequent layers of matter on the path of rays. We fit the simulated quad image configurations with time delays using nonsingular isothermal ellipsoids (NSIE) with external shear as lens models, treating the Hubble constant as a free parameter. We get a large artificial catalog of lenses with derived values of the Hubble constant, Hfit. The average and median of Hfit differ from the true value used in simulations by < 0.5 km/s/Mpc which includes the influence of matter along the line of sight and in the lens vicinity, and uncertainty in lens parameters, except the slope of the matter distribution, which is fixed. The characteristic uncertainty of Hfit is ~3 km/s/Mpc. Substituting the lens shear parameters with values estimated from the simulations reduces the uncertainty to ~2 km/s/Mpc.

On rates of supernovae strongly lensed by galactic haloes in Millennium Simulation

We make use of publicly available results from N-body Millennium Simulation to create mock samples of lensed supernovae type Ia and core-collapse. Simulating galaxy-galaxy lensing we derive the rates of lensed supernovae and find than at redshifts higher that 0.5 about 0.06 per cent of supernovae will be lensed by a factor two or more. Future wide field surveys like Gaia or LSST should be able to detect lensed supernovae in their unbiased sky monitoring. Gaia (from 2013) will detect at least 2 cases whereas LSST (from 2018) will see more than 500 a year. Large number of future lensed supernovae will allow to verify results of cosmological simulations. The strong galaxy- galaxy lensing gives an opportunity to reach high-redshift supernovae type Ia and extend the Hubble diagram sample.