Effects of the core radius of an isothermal ellipsoidal gravitational lens on the caustics and the critical curves

We study the effect of the core radius of an isothermal ellipsoidal gravitational lens on the caustics and the critical curves. We derive an analytic expression of the caustics for an isothermal ellipsoidal gravitational lens via a sixth-order algebraic equation. Since the expression is too long, by using another method we obtain a parametric representation of the critical curves in order to show analytically that there exist three cases: There are two curves for a small core radius, one for a quite large one, and no curves appear for an extremely large one, though the latter two cases are not realistic. The caustics are represented also by the same parameter.Comment: 4 pages; accepted for publication in A&

Effects of a deformation of a star on the gravitational lensing

We study analytically a gravitational lens due to a deformed star, which is modeled by using a monopole and a quadrupole moment. Positions of the images are discussed for a source on the principal axis. We present explicit expressions for the lens equation for this gravitational lens as a single real tenth-order algebraic equation. Furthermore, we compute an expression for the caustics as a discriminant for the polynomial. Another simple parametric representation of the caustics is also presented in a more tractable form. A simple expression for the critical curves is obtained to clarify a topological feature of the critical curves; the curves are simply connected if and only if the distortion is sufficiently large.Comment: 8 pages; accepted for publication in MNRA

Perturbative Approach to the Gravitational Lensing by a Non-spherically Distorted Compact Object

We investigate the gravitational lens effect caused by a non-spherically distorted compact object. The non-spherical property of the gravitational potential is modeled by a quadrupole moment. Under the assumption that the quadrupole contribution is small, we solve perturbatively the lens equation and obtain the image positions and the amplification factors. We show that the separation angle of two major images is only slightly changed by the existence of the quadrupole contribution, whereas the difference of the amplification factors may be significantly modified. Our results indicate that even a tiny non-spherical distortion of the lens potential may cause significant amount of flux anomalies in the lensed images.Comment: 10 pages, version accepted for publication in PT

Observational Upper Bound on the Cosmic Abundances of Negative-mass Compact Objects and Ellis Wormholes from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search

The latest result in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search (SQLS) has set the first cosmological constraints on negative-mass compact objects and Ellis wormholes. There are no multiple images lensed by the above two exotic objects for $\sim 50000$ distant quasars in the SQLS data. Therefore, an upper bound is put on the cosmic abundances of these lenses. The number density of negative mass compact objects is $n<10^{-8} (10^{-4}) h^3 {\rm Mpc}^{-3}$ at the mass scale $|M| > 10^{15} (10^{12}) M_\odot$, which corresponds to the cosmological density parameter $|\Omega| < 10^{-4}$ at the galaxy-scale mass range $|M|=10^{12-15}M_\odot$. The number density of the Ellis wormhole is $n<10^{-4} h^3 {\rm Mpc}^{-3}$ for a range of the throat radius $a = 10^{1-4}$pc, which is much smaller than the Einstein ring radius.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, minor changes, some references added, accepted for publication in ApJ