• FRBs Lensed by Point Masses I. Lens Mass Estimation for Doubly Imaged FRBs

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright radio transient events with durations on the order of milliseconds. The majority of FRB sources discovered so far have a single peak, with the exception of a few showing multiple-peaked profiles, the origin of which is unknown. In this work, we show that the strong lensing effect of a point mass or a point mass $+$ external shear on a single-peak FRB can produce double peaks (i.e. lensed images). In particular, the leading peak will always be more magnified and hence brighter than the trailing peak for a point-mass lens model, while the point-mass $+$ external shear lens model can produce a less magnified leading peak. We find that, for a point-mass lens model, the combination of lens mass $M$ and redshift $z_l$ in the form of $M(1+z_l)$ can be directly computed from two observables -- the delayed time $\Delta t$ and the flux ratio of the leading peak to the trailing peak $R$. For a point-mass $+$ external shear lens model, upper and lower limits in $M(1+z_l)$ can also be obtained from $\Delta t$ and $R$ for a given external shear strength. In particular, tighter lens mass constraints can be achieved when the observed $R$ is larger. Lastly, we show the process of constraining lens mass using the observed values of $\Delta t$ and $R$ of two double-peaked FRB sources, i.e. FRB 121002 and FRB 130729, as references, although the double-peaked profiles are not necessarily caused by strong lensing.

  • FRBs Lensed by Point Masses II. The multi-peaked FRBs from the point view of microlensing

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: The microlensing effect has developed into a powerful technique for a diverse range of applications including exoplanet discoveries, structure of the Milky Way, constraints on MAssive Compact Halo Objects, and measurements of the size and profile of quasar accretion discs. In this paper, we consider a special type of microlensing events where the sources are fast radio bursts with $\sim$milliseconds (ms) durations for which the relative motion between the lens and source is negligible. In this scenario, it is possible to temporally resolve the individual microimages. As a result, a method beyond the inverse ray shooting (IRS) method, which only evaluates the total magnification of all microimages, is needed. We therefore implement an algorithm for identifying individual microimages and computing their magnifications and relative time delays. We validate our algorithm by comparing to analytical predictions for a single microlens case and find excellent agreement. We show that the superposition of pulses from individual microimages produces a light curve that appears as multi-peaked FRBs. The relative time delays between pulses can reach 0.1--1 ms for stellar-mass lenses and hence can already be resolved temporally by current facilities. Although not yet discovered, microlensing of FRBs will become regular events and surpass the number of quasar microlensing events in the near future when $10^{4-5}$ FRBs are expected to be discovered on a daily basis. Our algorithm provides a way of generating the microlensing light curve that can be used for constraining stellar mass distribution in distant galaxies.

  • An Improved GPU-Based Ray-Shooting Code For Gravitational Microlensing

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: We present an improved inverse ray-shooting code based on GPUs for generating microlensing magnification maps. In addition to introducing GPUs for acceleration, we put the efforts in two aspects: (i) A standard circular lens plane is replaced by a rectangular one to reduce the number of unnecessary lenses as a result of an extremely prolate rectangular image plane. (ii) Interpolation method is applied in our implementation which has achieved an significant acceleration when dealing with large number of lenses and light rays required by high resolution maps. With these applications, we have greatly reduced the running time while maintaining high accuracy: the speed has been increased by about 100 times compared with ordinary GPU based IRS code and GPU-D code when handling large number of lenses. If encountered the high resolution situation up to $10000^2$ pixels, resulting in almost $10^{11}$ light rays, the running time can also be reduced by two orders of magnitude.

  • Wave effect of gravitational waves intersected with a microlens field: a new algorithm and supplementary study

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: The increase in gravitational wave (GW) events has allowed receiving strong lensing image pairs of GWs. However, the wave effect (diffraction and interference) due to the microlens field contaminates the parameter estimation of the image pair, which may lead to a misjudgment of strong lensing signals. To quantify the influence of the microlens field, researchers need a large sample of statistical research. Nevertheless, due to the oscillation characteristic, the Fresnel-Kirchhoff diffraction integral's computational time hinders this aspect's study. Although many algorithms are available, most cannot be well applied to the case where the microlens field is embedded in galaxy/galaxy clusters. This work proposes a faster and more accurate algorithm for studying the wave optics effect of microlenses embedded in different types of strong lensing images. Additionally, we provide a quantitative estimation criterion for the lens plane boundary for the Fresnel-Kirchhoff diffraction integral. This algorithm can significantly facilitate the study of wave optics, particularly in the case of microlens fields embedded in galaxy/galaxy clusters.

  • Microlensing sheds light on the detection of strong lensing gravitational waves

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: The strong lensing gravitational wave (SLGW) is a promising transient phenomenon containing rich physics. However, the poor sky localization due to the long-wave nature of gravitational waves makes the identification of such events very challenging. We propose a new method based on the wave optics effect of the microlensing field embedded in SLGW data. The microlensing diffraction/interference fringes can produce frequency-dependent random fluctuations in the waveform. To pin down the microlensing induced stochastic features in the waveform, we utilize both the template-independent method, \texttt{cWB}, and the template-dependent method, \texttt{Bilby}, to reconstruct the waveform with and without microlensing imprints. The mismatching degree of these two waveforms can be treated as an indicator of SLGW events. We forecast the identification rate of this method with the third-generation gravitational wave observatory, such as Cosmic Explorer. Our result shows that this method can successfully identify about 2 (out of 180) SLGW events with strong enough microlensing effect per year. This method is entirely data-driven, which is immune to model priors, and can greatly avoid the false positive errors contaminated by the coincident unlensed events.