The GL bibliography and an interactive database

It is now possible to directly access, via the Internet, a bibliographical database on Gravitational Lensing (GL) literature. The Interactive Gravitational Lensing Bibliography (IGLB) totalizes more than 2400 titles of published articles in scientific journals and meeting proceedings (except those fully dedicated to Gravitational Lenses) as well as papers submitted to the e-Print archive. This database is a product from the Gravitational Lensing Bibliography first presented in 1993 (Proceedings of the 31st Liege International Astrophysical Colloquium). It is easy to do field based searches for title keywords, authors (using boolean operators), year and journal (a pull-down list of the most cited journals is available). Access to the original version of published articles as well as to preprints submitted to the e-Print archive at the URL address http://xxx.lanl.gov/ is also provided. This database is updated approximately every two months. The "complete" bibliography of published articles is also available in the form of Latex and PostScript files. The IGLB can be accessed at the URL: http://vela.astro.ulg.ac.be/grav_lensComment: 2 pages, 2 figures, uses paspconf.sty. Poster contribution to "Gravitational Lensing: Recent Progress and Future Goals", Boston University 1999, eds. T. G. Brainerd and C. S. Kochane

Redshift estimate of a gravitational lens from the observed reddening of a multiply imaged quasar

Light rays from a multiply imaged quasar usually sample different path lengths across the deflector. Extinction in the lensing galaxy may thus lead to a differential obscuration and reddening between the observed macro-lensed QSO images. These effects naturally depend on the precise shape of the extinction law and on the redshift of the lens. By means of numerical Monte-Carlo simulations, using a least-squares fitting method and assuming an extinction law similar to that observed in the Galaxy, we show how accurate photometric observations of multiply imaged quasars obtained in several spectral bands could lead to the estimate of the lens redshift, irrespective of the visibility of the deflector. Observational requirements necessary to apply this method to real cases are thoroughly discussed. If extinction laws turn out to be too different from galaxy to galaxy, we find out that more promising observations should consist in getting high signal-to-noise low resolution spectra of at least three distinct images of a lensed quasar, over a spectral range as wide as possible, from which it should be straightforward to extract the precise shape of the redshifted extinction law. Very high signal-to-noise, low spectral resolution, VLT observations of H1413+117 and MG 0414+0534 should enable one to derive such a redshifted extinction law.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures, to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics (also available at http://vela.astro.ulg.ac.be/preprint/

Introduction to Optical/IR Interferometry: history and basic principles

The present notes refer to a lecture delivered on 27 September 2017 in Roscoff during the 2017 Evry Schatzman School. It concerns a general introduction to optical/IR interferometry, including a brief history, a presentation of the basic principles, some important theorems and relevant applications.The layout of these lecture notes is as follows. After a short introduction, we proceed with some reminders concerning the representation of a field of electromagnetic radiation. We then present a short history of interferometry, from the first experiment of Fizeau and Stefan to modern optical interferometers. We then discuss the notions of light coherence, including the van Cittert - Zernicke theorem and describe the principle of interferometry using two telescopes. We present some examples of modern interferometers and typical results obtained with these. Finally, we address three important theorems: the fundamental theorem, the convolution theorem and the Wiener-Khinchin theorem which enable to get a better insight into the field of optical/IR interferometry.Comment: 45 pages, based on a lecture given at the 2017 edition of the Evry Schatzman school, dedicated to the high-angular resolution imaging of stars and their direct environment. Videos "Introduction to Optical/Infrared Interferometry" IUCCA, PUNE, INDIA, 2018, 10 hours lectures https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/223150 & https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgbVWzVdxoUtI_223J1QEwIeKrzWMVMC

A non exhaustive bibliography on gravitational lensing

The authors present a non exhaustive bibliography on "gravitational lensing", totalizing more than 1000 titles. Books (related to) and conference proceedings fully devoted to "gravitational lensing" are listed separately

Gravitational lensing in quasar samples

The first cosmic mirage was discovered approximately 20 years ago as the double optical counterpart of a radio source. This phenomenon had been predicted some 70 years earlier as a consequence of General Relativity. We present here a summary of what we have learnt since. The applications are so numerous that we had to concentrate on a few selected aspects of this new field of research. This review is focused on strong gravitational lensing, i.e. the formation of multiple images, in QSO samples. It is intended to give the reader an up-to-date status of the observations and to present an overview of its most interesting potential applications in cosmology and astrophysics, as well as numerous important results achieved so far. The first section follows an intuitive approach to the basics of gravitational lensing and is developed in view of our interest in multiply imaged quasars. The astrophysical and cosmological applications of gravitational lensing are outlined in Sect. 2 and the most important results are presented in Sect. 5. Sections 3 and 4 are devoted to the observations. Finally, conclusions are summarized in the last section. We have tried to avoid duplication with existing (and excellent) introductions to the field of oravitational lensing. For this reason, we did not concentrate on the individual properties of specific lens models, as these are already well presented in Narayan and Bartelmann (1996) and on a more intuitive ground in Refsdal and Surdej (1994). Wambsganss (1998) proposes a broad view on gravitational lensing, in astronomy; the reviews by Fort and Mellier (1994) and Hattori et al. (1999) deal with lensing by galaxy clusters, microlensing in the Galaxy and the local group is reviewed by Paczynski (1996) and a general panorama on weak lensing is given by Bartelmann and Schneider (1999) and Mellier (1999). The monograph on the theory of gravitational lensing by Schneider, Ehlers and Falco (1992) also remains a reference in the field

Close projected QSO-Galaxy associations: are they real?

peer reviewedThe present status of close projected associations between high redshift quasars and foreground galaxies is reviewed in the framework of gravitational lensing, adopting both an observational and a theoretical approach. The Non Singular Isothermal Spherical lens model (Hinshaw & Krauss 1987) is used. We confirm that a stronger overdensity q of bright galaxies is expected at small projected angular separations (<= 3arcsec ) from high redshift and bright (thus highly luminous) quasars (HLQs). The effects of a non singular galactic core radius and/or microlensing only slightly enhance this expected overdensity. The predictions reproduce pretty well the scarce observations which are presently available, with the exception of two rather high overdensities previously claimed in the literature (e.g. q=2.9 for theta <= 6arcsec , Webster & Hewett 1990). Uncontrolled morphological selections may affect these controversial results so that additional unbiased observations are badly needed before rejecting gravitational lensing as the mechanism to produce the observed close angular QSO-galaxy associations. We describe three new selected and bias-free samples consisting of a total of 219 different HLQs. Although an apparent overdensity is detected in two of them, these galaxy excesses are found to be statistically not significant. Firm confirmation of the reality of close projected QSO-Galaxy associations is hampered by small number statistics: the expected and observed absolute numbers of such QSO-galaxy associations are still presently found to be very small. Therefore, the corresponding error bars are quite large. We conclude that the best observational strategy to significantly detect (at 3sigma ) an overdensity of galaxies near HLQs is to observe about 1500 HLQs (M_V ~ -29) down to a limiting magnitude Rlim ~ 23. Future automated surveys may provide us with such a large and unbiased database. In conclusions, we find that the lensing-induced correlation between galaxies and HLQs at small angular separations consists of a very interesting but weak effect, much less sensitive to cosmological or astrophysical parameters than the number of multiply imaged sources expected within a sample of HLQs. Based on data collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chil

Gravitational lensing studies with the 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT)

A 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) is being built in the north of Chile by an international consortium and will become operational in two years from now. We present here a short description of the telescope as well as estimates of the microlensing, macrolensing and weak lensing effects expected from a deep, multicolor imaging survey made with such a telescope

HST observations of gravitationally lensed QSOs

Thanks to its sharp view, HST has significantly improved our knowledge of tens of gravitationally lensed quasars in four different respects: (1) confirming their lensed nature; (2) detecting the lensing galaxy responsible for the image splitting; (3) improving the astrometric accuracy on the positions of the unresolved QSO images and of the lens; (4) resolving extended lensed structures from the QSO hosts into faint NIR or optical rings or arcs. These observations have helped to break some degeneracies on the lens potential, to probe the galaxy evolution and to reconstruct the true shape of the QSO host with an increased angular resolution