Microlensing of Quasar Ultraviolet Iron Emission

Guerras, E.; Mediavilla, E.; Jimenez-Vicente, J.; Kochanek, C. S.; Muñoz, J. A.; Falco, E.; Motta, V.; Rojas, K.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 778, Issue 2, article id. 123, 6 pp. (2013).

Advertised on:
12
2013
Number of authors
8
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
20
Refereed citations
18
Description
We measure the differential microlensing of the UV Fe II and Fe III emission line blends between 14 quasar image pairs in 13 gravitational lenses. We find that the UV iron emission is strongly microlensed in four cases with amplitudes comparable to that of the continuum. Statistically modeling the magnifications, we infer a typical size of r_s\sim 4\sqrt{M/M_\odot } light-days for the Fe line-emitting regions, which is comparable to the size of the region generating the UV continuum (~3-7 light-days). This may indicate that a significant part of the UV Fe II and Fe III emission originates in the quasar accretion disk.
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Introduction Gravitational lenses are a powerful tool for Astrophysics and Cosmology. The goals of this project are: i) to obtain a robust determination of the Hubble constant from the time delay measured between the images of a lensed quasar; ii) to study the individual and statistical properties of dark matter condensations in lens galaxies from
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