Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1999-10-11
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
4 pages, to appear in "Gravitational Lensing: Recent Progress and Future Goals" ASP conference series, eds. Brainerd T. & Koch
Scientific paper
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 >=0.5-Msun MACHOs. The current data appears to support microlensing as the dominant source of the observed external variability.
de Bruyn Ger A.
Koopmans Leon V. E.
No associations
LandOfFree
Microlensing & Scintillation of Gravitationally Lensed Compact Radio Sources: Evidence for MACHOs? does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Microlensing & Scintillation of Gravitationally Lensed Compact Radio Sources: Evidence for MACHOs?, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Microlensing & Scintillation of Gravitationally Lensed Compact Radio Sources: Evidence for MACHOs? will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-460796