GRAVITATIONAL MICROLENSING BY RANDOM MOTION OF STARS - ANALYSIS OF LIGHT CURVES

We present a quantitative analysis of the effect of microlensing cause d by random motion of individual stars in the galaxy lensing a backgro und quasar. We calculate a large number of magnification patterns for positions of the stars slightly offset from one frame to the next and in this way obtain light curves for fixed quasar and galaxy positions, due only to the change in the relative star positions. These light cu rves are analyzed to identify microlensing events, which are then clas sified with respect to height, duration, and slope. These random motio n microlensing events are compared with the corresponding ones caused by the bulk motion of the galaxy. We find that microlensing events pro duced by random motion of stars are shorter, steeper, and more frequen t than bulk motion events, assuming the velocity dispersion of the sta rs equals the bulk velocity of the galaxy. The reason for this differe nce is that in the case of random motion, caustics can move with an ar bitrarily high velocity, producing very short events, whereas in the c omparison case for bulk motion, a microlensing event can never be shor ter than it takes a fold caustic, which moves with the velocity of the lensing galaxy projected onto the quasar plane, to cross the quasar. An accompanying video illustrates these results. For three different v alues of the surface mass density re. it shows time sequences of 1000 magnification patterns for slowly changing lens positions, together wi th the positions and velocity vectors of the microlensing stars.