Time delay and accretion disk size measurements in the lensed quasar SBS 0909+532 from multiwavelength microlensing analysis

We present three complete seasons and two half-seasons of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) r-band photometry of the gravitationally lensed quasar SBS 0909+532 from the U.S. Naval Observatory, as well as two seasons each of SDSS g-band and r-band monitoring from the Liverpool Robotic Telescope. Using...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Hainline, Laura J., Morgan, Christopher W., MacLeod, Chelsea L., Landaal, Zachary D., Kochanek, C. S., Harris, Hugh C., Tilleman, Trudy, Goicoechea Santamaría, Luis Julián|||0000-0003-0110-834X, Shalyapin, Vyacheslav, Falco, Emilio E.
Formato: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2013
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Cantabria (UC)
Repositorio:UCrea Repositorio Abierto de la Universidad de Cantabria
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.unican.es:10902/4808
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10902/4808
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Accretion, accretion disks
Gravitational lensing: micro
Gravitational lensing: strong
Quasars: individual (SBS 0909+532)
Descrição
Resumo:We present three complete seasons and two half-seasons of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) r-band photometry of the gravitationally lensed quasar SBS 0909+532 from the U.S. Naval Observatory, as well as two seasons each of SDSS g-band and r-band monitoring from the Liverpool Robotic Telescope. Using Monte Carlo simulations to simultaneously measure the system’s time delay and model the r-band microlensing variability, we confirm and significantly refine the precision of the system’s time delay to ΔtAB = 50+2 −4 days, where the stated uncertainties represent the bounds of the formal 1σ confidence interval. There may be a conflict between the time delay measurement and a lens consisting of a single galaxy. While models based on the Hubble Space Telescope astrometry and a relatively compact stellar distribution can reproduce the observed delay, the models have somewhat less dark matter than we would typically expect. We also carry out a joint analysis of the microlensing variability in the r and g bands to constrain the size of the quasar’s continuum source at these wavelengths, obtaining log{(rs,r/cm)[cos i/0.5]1/2} = 15.3 ± 0.3 and log{(rs,g/cm)[cos i/0.5]1/2} = 14.8 ± 0.9, respectively. Our current results do not formally constrain the temperature profile of the accretion disk but are consistent with the expectations of standard thin disk theory.