Microlensing time-scales and flux magnification probabilities of a sample of 204 lensed quasars

TL;DR

This study statistically analyzes microlensing time-scales and magnification probabilities for 204 lensed quasars, incorporating realistic galaxy effects and recent observational data to improve understanding of quasar microlensing phenomena.

Contribution

It extends microlensing analysis to all known lensed quasars with detailed modeling, estimating source sizes, crossing times, and microlensing probabilities using realistic galaxy models.

Findings

Mean source crossing time is approximately 2.59 years.

Average Einstein radius crossing time is about 11.29 years.

Estimated quasar half-light radius is 5.4 light-days, with a microlens mass fraction of at least 15%.

Abstract

Quasar microlensing is both a very useful tool in cosmology and astrophysics, and a source of uncertainty in some studies like the determination of the Hubble constant from lensed quasars. Microlensing probability and time-scales have been statistically studied using as a reference scale the Einstein ring crossing time of an isolated mass. Our goal is to extend the statistical analysis of microlensing to all currently known lensed quasars with available data, considering realistic optical depths and the gravitational effect of the lens galaxy. We take into account new observational results about quasar sizes and peculiar velocities of lens galaxies. We apply automatic lens modeling to the 204 systems available. For each image, we compute microlensing magnification maps and histograms. Using thin disk source sizes scaled to take into account recent measurements of accretion disk sizes, we find a mean source crossing time of $2.59\pm 0.07$ years. The mean Einstein radius crossing time is $ 11.29 \pm 0.05$ years. When a fraction of mass in microlenses $\alpha=0.2$ is adopted, we find a good matching between the modeled histogram of mean microlensing magnifications for the images in our sample and the experimental histogram of microlensing magnifications. From the modeling of microlensing magnification histograms, we estimate the average half-light radius of the quasar source, $R_{1/2}=5.4\pm 2.7$ light-days, and a lower limit to the mass fraction in microlenses, $\alpha\ge 0.15$. From the microlensing magnification maps, we find that a lensed quasar image has a mean probability of approximately 9% of being involved in a high-magnification event ($\Delta m \le -0.32$). We select a group of images with the largest probabilities and the smallest crossing times.