Microlensing in phase space - II. Correlations analysis

Abstract

Applications of the phase‐space approach to the calculation of the microlensing autocorrelation function are presented. The continuous propagation equation for a random star field with a Gaussian velocity distribution is solved in the leading non‐trivial approximation using the perturbation technique. It is shown that microlensing modulations can be important in the interpretation of optical and shorter‐wavelength light curves of pulsars, power spectra of active galactic nuclei and coherence estimates for quasi‐periodic oscillations of dwarf novae and low‐mass X‐ray binaries. Extra scatter in the brightness of Type Ia supernovae due to gravitational microlensing is shown to be of order up to 0.2 mag depending on the extent of the light curves.

Microlensing in phase space - I. Continuous propagation of variability moments

“…Paper II of this series (Tuntsov & Lewis 2006) presents the calculation of how the flux autocorrelation function and power spectra are affected by gravitational lensing following the approach present in this study. The results are applied to modulation of pulsars' emission, coherence estimates for quasi-periodic oscillations in dwarf novae and low-mass X-ray binaries and the interpretation of power spectra of active galactic nuclei.…”