Greg Dobler edited Microlensing.tex  over 10 years ago

Commit id: 8ff12d3a1373078bb3f1007a4ae4242681354894

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{\bf Greg: can you please fill in the references in this section please? Thanks!}  As noted in \S\ref{sec:car}, the physical size of a quasar accretion disk is $R_{\rm src} \sim 10^{15}$-$10^{16}$ cm, which, at cosmological distances, represents an angular size of $\sim1$ $\mu$arcsecond ($\mu$as). In addition, the Einstein radius for a 1 $M_{\odot}$ point mass at these distances is also $\sim1$ $\mu$as, indicating that the stars in the lens galaxy will typically have an order unity (or more) effect on the brightnesses of the individual images. Given the relevant angular scales, this phenomenon is term termed  ``microlensing''. Microlensing has long been acknowledged as a significant source of potential error when estimating time delays from optical monitoring data \citep[see e.g.][and references therein]{TewesEtal2013a} due to the fact that the relative velocity between the source and lens leads to time dependent fluctuations that are independent between the images. {\bf (GGD: put a microlensing figure here before we reference caustics.)} For caustic crossing events the relevant time scales are months to years, with smoother variations occurring over roughly decade timescales. As expected, the microlensing fluctuations are larger at bluer wavelengths, which correspond to smaller source sizes. The solution is to model the microlensing in each quasar image individually, at the same time as inferring the time delay \citep[e.g.]{Kochanek2004,TewesEtal2013b}.