The Microlensing Properties of a Sample of 87 Lensed Quasars

TL;DR

This study estimates microlensing properties of 87 lensed quasars, revealing typical timescales and potential for future monitoring to understand quasar and lens galaxy characteristics.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive estimation of microlensing timescales for a large sample of lensed quasars, aiding future survey planning and analysis.

Findings

Median Einstein radius crossing time is 20.6 years.

Median source crossing time is 7.3 months.

Approximately half the lenses are quiescent over 10-year periods.

Abstract

Gravitational microlensing is a powerful tool for probing the physical properties of quasar accretion disks and properties of the lens galaxy such as its dark matter fraction and mean stellar mass. Unfortunately the number of lensed quasars ($\sim 90$) exceeds our monitoring capabilities. Thus, estimating their microlensing properties is important for identifying good microlensing candidates as well as for the expectations of future surveys. In this work we estimate the microlensing properties of a sample of 87 lensed quasars. While the median Einstein radius crossing time scale is 20.6 years, the median source crossing time scale is 7.3 months. Broadly speaking, this means that on $\sim 10$ year timescales roughly half the lenses will be quiescent, with the source in a broad demagnified valley, and roughly half will be active with the source lying in the caustic ridges. We also found that the location of the lens system relative to the CMB dipole has a modest effect on microlensing timescales, and in theory microlensing could be used to confirm the kinematic origin of the dipole. As a corollary of our study we analyzed the accretion rate parameters in a sub-sample of 32 lensed quasars. At fixed black hole mass, it is possible to sample a broad range of luminosities (i.e., Eddington factors) if it becomes feasible to monitor fainter lenses.