An X-ray study of gravitational lenses

Gravitational lensing of distant quasars by intervening galaxies is a spectacular phenomenon in the universe. With the advent of Chandra, it is possible to resolve for the first time in the X-ray band lensed quasar images with separations greater than about 0.35 arcsec. We use lensing as a tool to study AGN and Cosmology with Chandra and XMM-Newton.

First, we present results from a mini-survey of relatively high redshift (1.7 < z < 4) gravitationally lensed radio-quiet quasars observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and with XMM-Newton. The lensing magnification effect allows us to search for changes in quasar spectroscopic and flux variability properties with redshift over three orders of magnitude in intrinsic X-ray luminosity. It extends the study of quasar properties to unlensed X-ray flux levels as low as a few times 10 -15 erg cm -2 s -1 in the observed 0.4-8 keV band. For the first time, these observations of lensed quasars have provided medium to high signal-to-noise ratio X-ray spectra of a sample of relatively high-redshift and low X-ray luminosity quasars. We find a possible correlation between the X-ray powerlaw photon index and X-ray luminosity of the gravitationally lensed radio-quiet quasar sample. The X-ray spectral slope steepens as the X-ray luminosity increases. This correlation is still signific ant when we combine our data with other samples of radio-quiet quasars with z > 1.5, especially in the low luminosity range between 10^43 -10^45.5 erg s -1 . This result is surprising considering that such a correlation is not found for quasars with redshifts below 1.5. We suggest that this correlation can be understood in the context of the hot-corona model for X-ray emission from quasar accretion disks, under the hypothesis that the quasars in our sample accrete very close to their Eddington limits and the observed luminosity range is set by the range of black hole masses (this hypothesis is consistent with recent predictions of semi-analytic models for quasar evolution). The upper limits of X-ray variability of our relatively high redshift sample of lensed quasars are consistent with the known correlation between variability and luminosity observed in Seyfert is when this correlation is extrapolated to the larger luminosities of our sample.

Second, we present the observations of the gravitationally lensed system Q 2237+ 0305 (Einstein Cross) performed with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) on-board the Chandra X-ray Observatory on 2000 September 6, and on 2001 December 8 for 30.3 ks and 9.5 ks, respectively.

Finally, we present results from time-delay searches in our sample of gravitational lenses observed with Chandra and XMM-Newton.