Creating images by adding masses to gravitational point lenses

DOI10.1007/S10714-015-1876-6MaRDI QIDQ2353802zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Olivier Sète, Robert Luce, Jörg Liesen

Publication date 9 July 2015

Published in General Relativity and Gravitation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.2785

zbMATH Keywords

gravitational lensesmultiple imagesmaximal lensing

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Equations of motion in general relativity and gravitational theory (83C10) Galactic and stellar dynamics (85A05)

Abstract: A well-studied maximal gravitational point lens construction of S. H. Rhie produces $5n$ images of a light source using $n+1$ deflector masses. The construction arises from a circular, symmetric deflector configuration on $n$ masses (producing only $3n+1$ images) by adding a tiny mass in the center of the other mass positions (and reducing all the other masses a little bit). In a recent paper we studied this "image creating effect" from a purely mathematical point of view (S`ete, Luce & Liesen, Comput. Methods Funct. Theory 15(1):9-35, 2015). Here we discuss a few consequences of our findings for gravitational microlensing models. We present a complete characterization of the effect of adding small masses to these point lens models, with respect to the number of images. In particular, we give several examples of maximal lensing models that are different from Rhie's construction and that do not share its highly symmetric appearance. We give generally applicable conditions that allow the construction of maximal point lenses on $n+1$ masses from maximal lenses on $n$ masses.

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Cited in

(10)

• How constant shifts affect the zeros of certain rational harmonic functions
• About the cover: visualization of harmonic functions
• Visual Exploration of Complex Functions
• The maximum number of zeros of \(r(z) - \overline{z}\) revisited
• Multiplane gravitational lenses with an abundance of images
• Maximal lensing: mass constraints on point lens configurations
• Gravitational lensing and the maximum number of images
• The valence of harmonic polynomials viewed through the probabilistic lens
• On the number of equilibria balancing Newtonian point masses with a central force
• Sharp parameter bounds for certain maximal point lenses

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