Wednesday, May 23, 2012

1205.4727 (Christopher W. Morgan et al.)

Further Evidence that Quasar X-Ray Emitting Regions Are Compact: X-Ray and Optical Microlensing in the Lensed Quasar Q J0158-4325    [PDF]

Christopher W. Morgan, Laura J. Hainline, Bin Chen, Malte Tewes, Christopher S. Kochanek, Xinyu Dai, Szymon Kozlowski, Jeffrey A. Blackburne, Ana M. Mosquera, George Chartas, Frederic Courbin, Georges Meylan
We present four new seasons of optical monitoring data and six epochs of X-ray photometry for the doubly-imaged lensed quasar Q J0158-4325. The high-amplitude, short-period microlensing variability for which this system is known has historically precluded a time delay measurement by conventional methods. We attempt to circumvent this limitation by application of a Monte Carlo microlensing analysis technique, but we are only able to prove that the delay must have the expected sign (image A leads image B). Despite our failure to robustly measure the time delay, we successfully model the microlensing at optical and X-ray wavelengths to find a half light radius for soft X-ray emission log(r_{1/2,X,soft}/cm) = 14.3^{+0.4}_{-0.5}, an upper limit on the half-light radius for hard X-ray emission log(r_{1/2,X,hard}/cm) <= 14.6 and a refined estimate of the inclination-corrected scale radius of the optical R-band (rest frame 3100 Angstrom) continuum emission region of log(r_s/cm) = 15.6+-0.3.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4727

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