Microlensing & scintillation of gravitationally lensed compact radio sources: Evidence for MACHOs?

Autor: Koopmans, LVE, de Bruyn, AG, Brainerd, TG, Kochanek, CS
Přispěvatelé: Kapteyn Astronomical Institute
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2001
Předmět:
Zdroj: GRAVITATIONAL LENSING: RECENT PROGRESS AND FUTURE GOALS, 193-196
STARTPAGE=193;ENDPAGE=196;TITLE=GRAVITATIONAL LENSING: RECENT PROGRESS AND FUTURE GOALS
Popis: We present the first unambiguous case of external variability of an extra-galactic radio source, the CLASS gravitational lens B1600+434, consisting of two images lensed by an edge-on disk galaxy. The VLA 8.5-GHz difference light curve of the lens images shows external variability at the 14.6-sigma confidence level. Although the current single-frequency VLA observations cannot conclusively exclude scintillation, several lines of evidence show that it does not dominate the short-term variability. This is supported by an ongoing three-frequency WSRT campaign. If scintillation is the dominant source of this external variability, it would require very different properties of the Galactic ionized ISM towards the two lens images. Microlensing of a superluminal jet component can explain both the rms and time-scale of variability, but requires the halo of the lens galaxy to be filled with greater than or similar to0.5-M-circle dot MACHOs. The current data appear to support microlensing as the dominant source of the observed external variability.
Databáze: OpenAIRE