“School of Astronomy”
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| Paper IPM / Astronomy / 11518 |
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Detecting compact objects such as black holes, white dwarfs, strange (Quark) stars and
neutron stars by means of their gravitational lensing effect on an observed companion in a binary
system has already been suggested almost four decades ago. However, these predictions
were made even before the first observations of gravitational lensing, whereas nowadays gravitational
microlensing surveys towards the Galactic bulge yield almost 1000 events per year
where one star magnifies the light of a more distant one.With a specific view on those experiments,
we therefore carrry out simulations to assess the prospects for detection of the transient
periodic magnification of the companion star, which lasts typically only a few hours binaries
involving a main-sequence star. We find that the effect is practically independent of the distance
of the binary system from the observer, but a limit to its detectability is given by the
achievability of dense monitoring with the required photometric accuracy...
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