Wave optics in plasma and gravitational lensing of coherent sources

The goal of this work will be to better understand the lensing of astrophysical sources such as pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs). Lensing is a phenomenon that occurs when clouds of material pass in front of a source, such as a star, causing the source to change in brightness, much like a magnifying glass can focus the light from the sun. This effect has traditionally been studied using a mathematical framework called geometirc optics. However, for sources like pulsars and FRBs (aka ?? coherent sources), geometric optics is not suitable, and a more general framework is needed, in which the wave nature of light is accounted for. The goal of this work is to develop a toolbox of mathematical and numerical techniques to analyze the lensing of coherent sources. We will develop code that will allow us to compute the effects of lensing for different classes of lenses, with the ultimate goal of being able to determine the details of a lens based on observations of a lensing event in data.

Faculty Supervisor:

Ue-Li Pen

Student:

Partner:

Academia Sinica

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Other

University:

University of Toronto

Program: