Hills and holes in the microlensing light curve due to plasma environment around gravitational lens

TL;DR

This study explores how plasma around a gravitational lens affects microlensing light curves, revealing that plasma can significantly deform these curves and even create 'holes' instead of 'hills', impacting observational interpretations.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical analysis of plasma effects on microlensing, showing how plasma density and observation frequency alter light curve shapes and can cause image disappearance.

Findings

Plasma causes significant deformation of microlensing light curves.

Refractive deflection can cancel gravitational lensing, creating 'holes' in light curves.

The 'hill-hole' effect offers new observational signatures in microlensing data.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the influence of the plasma surrounding the gravitational lens on the effect of microlensing. In presence of plasma around the lens, the deflection angle is determined by both the gravitational field of the lens and the chromatic refraction in the inhomogeneous plasma. We calculate microlensing light curves numerically for point-mass lens surrounded by power-law density distribution of plasma. A variety of possible curves is revealed, depending on the plasma density and frequency of observations. In the case of significant influence of plasma, the shape of microlensing light curve is strongly deformed in comparison with vacuum case. If the refractive deflection is large enough to compensate or to overcome the gravitational deflection, microlensing images can completely disappear for the observer. In this case, the remarkable effect occurs: formation of a 'hole' instead of a 'hill' in the center of microlensing light curve. Observational prospects of 'hill-hole' effect in different microlensing scenarios are discussed.