Transient sources in galaxy cluster fields: Prospects for different gravitationally lensed transients
by Ms. Miriam Golubchik
BGU
at Astrophysics and Cosmology Seminar
Wed, 15 Jan 2025, 11:10
Sacta-Rashi Building for Physics (54), room 207
Abstract
Strong gravitational lensing of transient sources has spurred much interest in recent years. It can teach us about the lensed sources themselves, the composition of the lens (and mainly its dark component), and the expansion rate of the universe through time delays. In this talk I will present results from three papers related to this topic. The first paper concentrates on a strong-lensing mass model for the first JWST galaxy cluster, SMACS J0723.3-7327, that we constructed to enable studies of lensed galaxies and of the lens. The second paper concentrates on an extensive search for transients in a sample of over 40 galaxy clusters, with a main motivation to look for caustic crossing events (CCEs) of distant stars. The search also led to the detection of 6 supernovae candidates, three of them being new discoveries presented and classified in this work for the first time. The third paper discusses yet another type of varying sources that might be lensed by galaxy clusters -- Type I active galactic nuclei (AGN) and quasars. In this work it is suggested that gravitational time delays between multiple images of strongly lensed quasars may be leveraged to conduct Reverberation Mapping at high redshift on a feasible time scale. I will overview our detailed estimates of the number of both high-mass and high-redshift quasars -- including the recently discovered Little Red Dot population -- that are expected to be strongly lensed by clusters and discoverable with different observing facilities.
Created on 12-01-2025 by Zitrin, Adi (zitrin)
Updaded on 12-01-2025 by Zitrin, Adi (zitrin)