Gravitational Lensing at Millimeter Wavelengths

With today's millimeter and submillimeter instruments observers use gravitational lensing mostly as a tool to boost the sensitivity when observing distant objects. This is evident through the dominance of gravitationally lensed objects among those detected in CO rotational lines at z>1. It is also evident in the use of lensing magnification by galaxy clusters in order to reach faint submm/mm continuum sources. There are, however, a few cases where millimeter lines have been directly involved in understanding lensing configurations. Future mm/submm instruments, such as the ALMA interferometer, will have both the sensitivity and the angular resolution to allow detailed observations of gravitational lenses. The almost constant sensitivity to dust emission over the redshift range z=1-10 means that the likelihood for strong lensing of dust continuum sources is much higher than for optically selected sources. A large number of new strong lenses are therefore likely to be discovered with ALMA, allowing a direct assessment of cosmological parameters through lens statistics. Combined with an angular resolution <0.1", ALMA will also be efficient for probing the gravitational potential of galaxy clusters, where we will be able to study both the sources and the lenses themselves, free of obscuration and extinction corrections, derive rotation curves for the lenses, their orientation and, thus, greatly constrain lens models.Comment: 69 pages, Review on quasar lensing. Part of a LNP Topical Volume on "Dark matter and gravitational lensing", eds. F. Courbin, D. Minniti. To be published by Springer-Verlag 2002. Paper with full resolution figures can be found at ftp://oden.oso.chalmers.se/pub/tommy/mmviews.ps.g

Dust in Supernovae and Supernova Remnants II: Processing and survival

Observations have recently shown that supernovae are efficient dust factories, as predicted for a long time by theoretical models. The rapid evolution of their stellar progenitors combined with their efficiency in precipitating refractory elements from the gas phase into dust grains make supernovae the major potential suppliers of dust in the early Universe, where more conventional sources like Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars did not have time to evolve. However, dust yields inferred from observations of young supernovae or derived from models do not reflect the net amount of supernova-condensed dust able to be expelled from the remnants and reach the interstellar medium. The cavity where the dust is formed and initially resides is crossed by the high velocity reverse shock which is generated by the pressure of the circumstellar material shocked by the expanding supernova blast wave. Depending on grain composition and initial size, processing by the reverse shock may lead to substantial dust erosion and even complete destruction. The goal of this review is to present the state of the art about processing and survival of dust inside supernova remnants, in terms of theoretical modelling and comparison to observations