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In the standard gravitational lensing scenario, rays from a background source are bent in the direction of a foreground lensing mass distribution. Diverging lens behaviour produces deflections in the opposite sense to gravitational lensing, and is also of astrophysical interest. In fact, diverging lensing due to compact distributions of plasma has been proposed as an explanation for the extreme scattering events (ESEs) that produce frequency-dependent dimming of extra-galactic radio sources, and may also be related to the refractive radio-wave phenomena observed to affect the flux density of pulsars. In this work we study the behaviour of two families of astrophysical diverging lenses in the geometric optics limit, the power-law and the exponential plasma lenses. Generally, the members of these model families show distinct behaviour in terms of image formation and magnification, however the inclusion of a finite core for certain power-law lenses can produce a caustic and critical curve morphology that is similar to the well-studied Gaussian plasma lens. Both model families can produce dual radial critical curves, a novel distinction from the tangential distortion usually produced by gravitational (converging) lenses. The deflection angle and magnification of a plasma lens varies with the observational frequency, producing wavelength-dependent magnifications that alter the amplitudes and the shape of the light curves. Thus, multi-wavelength observations can be used to physically constrain the distribution of the electron density in such lenses.
Spherical plasma lens models are known to suffer from a severe over-pressure problem, with some observations requiring lenses with central pressures up to millions of times in excess of the ambient ISM. There are two ways that lens models can solve t
Plasma lensing is the refraction of low-frequency electromagnetic rays due to free electrons in the interstellar medium. Although the phenomenon has a distinct similarity to gravitational lensing, particularly in its mathematical description, plasma
In contrast to the converging, achromatic behaviour of axisymmetric gravitational lenses, diverging frequency-dependent lensing occurs from refraction due to a distribution of over-dense axisymmetric plasma along an observers line of sight. Such plas
The positions of images produced by the gravitational lensing of background sources provide unique insight in to galaxy-lens mass distribution. However, even quad images of extended sources are not able to fully characterize the central regions of th
We present Keck-Adaptive Optics and Hubble Space Telescope high resolution near-infrared (IR) imaging for 500 um-bright candidate lensing systems identified by the Herschel Multi-tiered Extra-galactic Survey (HerMES) and Herschel Astrophysical Terahe