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# Tolman-Bayin type static charged fluid spheres in general relativity

## 1 Introduction

The study of the interior of stars is always fascinating to the astrophysicists, specially in connection to general theory of relativity. This is obvious because of the fact that towards the late stages of stellar evolution, general relativistic effects become much important. One of the remarkable works in this direction was that of the Tolman (1939) solutions. Tolman extensively studied the stellar interior and provided a class of explicit solution in terms of known analytic functions for the static, spherically symmetric equilibrium fluid distribution. Subsequently Wyman (1949), Leibovitz (1969) and Whitman (1977) generalized some of Tolman’s solutions. Bayin (1978) also obtained some more new analytic solutions related to static fluid spheres using the method of quadratures.

Recently we (Ray & Das, 2002) have obtained the charged generalization of Bayin’s work (1978) motivated by the idea that in stellar astrophysics the coupled Einstein-Maxwell field equations may have some physical implications. In connection to singularity problem it is observed that in the presence of charge, the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric distribution of matter to a point singularity may be avoided. The mechanism is such that the gravitational attraction is counterbalanced by the repulsive Coulombian force in addition to the thermal pressure gradient due to fluid. Also, it is seen that the presence of the charge function serves as a safety valve, which absorbs much of the fine-tuning, necessary in the uncharged case (Ivanov, 2002). Thus, the problem of coupled charge-matter distributions in general relativity has received considerable attention.

The present paper is based on the simple investigation of the solutions already obtained by us (Ray & Das, 2002) and Pant & Sah (1979) in connection to the electromagnetic origin of the gravitational mass. It is worthwhile to mention here that there is a fairly long history of investigations about the nature of the mass of electron. Einstein (1919) himself believed that “… of the energy constituting matter three-quarters is to be ascribed to the electromagnetic field, and one-quarter to the gravitational field” whereas Lorentz’s (1904) conjecture of extended electron was that “there is no other, no ‘true’ or ‘material’ mass,” and thus provides only ’electromagnetic masses of the electron’. Wheeler (1962) also believed that electron has a ‘mass without mass’. Feynman (1964) termed this type of models as ‘electromagnetic mass models’ in his classic volume. Starting from 60’s in the last century several authors (e.g., Florides, 1962; Cooperstock & De La Cruz, 1978; Tiwari et al., 1984; Gautreau, 1985; Grøn, 1986; Ponce de Leon, 1987; and the references therein) took up the problem again and studied electromagnetic mass models for the static spherically symmetric charged perfect fluid distribution in the framework of general relativity. Very recenty the idea is extended to the Einstein-Cartan theory and Kaluza-Klein theory by adding torsion and higher dimension respectively (Tiwari & Ray, 1997; Ponce de Leon, 2003). Most of these workers exploit an equation of state $`\rho +p=0`$ where, in general, the matter density $`\rho >0`$ and pressure $`p<0`$. This type of equation of state implies that the matter distribution under consideration is in tension and hence the matter is known in the literature as a ‘false vacuum’ or ‘degenerate vacuum’ or ‘$`\rho `$-vacuum’ (Davies, 1984; Blome & Priester, 1984; Hogan, 1984; Kaiser & Stebbins, 1984).

It is interesting to note that in the present study, even though the solutions related to pressure and density in general follow the ordinary equation of state, viz., $`\rho +p0`$ but ultimately in connection to electromagnetic mass models it turns out to be the exotic kind of equation of state (Davies, 1984; Blome & Priester, 1984; Hogan, 1984; Kaiser & Stebbins, 1984) in both the cases of Bayin and Tolman solutions. We have investigated here that related to this type of vacuum- or imperfect-fluid equation of state the charged analogue of Bayin (1978) and Tolman (1939) type astrophysical class of solution show the electromagnetic field dependency of gravitational mass. Therefore, the existence of this type of solutions, in our opinion, is a probable extension of Lorentz’s conjecture in connection to astrophysical models.

## 2 Einstein-Maxwell field equations

We write the line element for static spherically symmetric spacetimes in the form

$`ds^2=A^2dt^2B^2dr^2r^2(d\theta ^2+sin^2\theta d\varphi ^2).`$ (1)
in the standard coordinates $`x^i=(t,r,\theta ,\varphi )`$, where the quantities $`A(r)`$ and $`B(r)`$ are the metric potentials.

The Einstein-Maxwell field equations, for the metric (1) in the comoving coordinates read as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{B^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2B^{}}{Br}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}=8\pi \rho +{\displaystyle \frac{q^2(r)}{r^4}},`$ (2)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{B^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2A^{}}{Ar}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}=8\pi p{\displaystyle \frac{q^2(r)}{r^4}},`$ (3)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{B^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{A^{\prime \prime }}{A}}{\displaystyle \frac{A^{}B^{}}{AB}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{A^{}}{A}}{\displaystyle \frac{B^{}}{B}}\right)\right]=8\pi p+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2(r)}{r^4}},`$ (4)
where the prime denotes differentiation with respect to radial coordinate $`r`$ only. In the equation (2) - (4), the quantities $`\rho `$, $`p`$ and $`q`$ represent the energy density, isotropic pressure and total electric charge respectively. The total charge within a sphere of radius $`r`$ is defined as

$`q(r)=4\pi {\displaystyle _0^r}J^0r^2AB𝑑r,`$ (5)
$`J^i`$ being the $`4`$-current takes here the form, via the electromagnetic field $`F^{01}`$, as

$`F^{01}={\displaystyle \frac{q(r)}{ABr^2}}.`$ (6)
Now, eliminating $`p`$ from equations (3) and (4) and assuming $`A^{}/Ar=C(r)`$ one can get

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{B^3r^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{C}{B^3}}\right)dB\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{B^2}}\right)dC`$
$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{B^21}{B^2r^3}}+{\displaystyle \frac{C^2r}{B^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{2q^2}{r^5}}\right)dr=0.`$ (7)
which is a Pfaffian differential equation in three dimensions having the general form as

$`f_1(B,C,r)dB+f_2(B,C,r)dC+f_3(B,C,r)dr=0.`$ (8)
## 3 Electromagnetic mass models for static charged fluid spheres

### 3.1 Bayin’s class of solution

The Pfaffian differential equation (7) can be solved in different ways as shown by us (Ray & Das, 2002) in details. It is shown that in terms of $`B(r)`$ when $`C(r)`$ is known, the Pfaffian differential equation (7) becomes

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dB}{dr}}=\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1\frac{2q^2}{r^2}}{\left(C+\frac{1}{r^2}\right)r^3}}\right]B^3+\left[{\displaystyle \frac{C^2r\frac{1}{r^3}+\frac{dC}{dr}}{C+\frac{1}{r^2}}}\right]B.`$ (9)
Also, in terms of $`C(r)`$ when $`B(r)`$ is given, the Pfaffian differential equation (7) modifies to

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dC}{dr}}=\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{Br^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{dB}{dr}}{\displaystyle \frac{B^21}{r^3}}\right)`$ $`+`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{B}}{\displaystyle \frac{dB}{dr}}\right)C`$
$`C^2r`$ $`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2B^2q^2}{r^5}},`$ (10)
which is a Riccati equation for $`C(r)`$ with known value of charge $`q`$.

By solving these differential equations (9) and (10), and also some other simple cases we (Ray & Das, 2002) obtained the solutions for Einstein-Maxwell field equations related to Bayin (1978) type astrophysical class of models. The solutions thus obtained for the parameters $`A`$, $`B`$, $`\rho `$, $`p`$ and $`q`$ respectively the gravitational potentials, energy density, isotropic pressure and electric charge are involved with several integration constants. Some of these may, in principle, be determined by matching of the interior solution to the exterior Reissner-Nordström metric at the boundary $`r=a`$ of the spherical matter distribution. The exterior Reissner-Nordström metric is given by

$`ds^2=\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{r^2}}\right)dt^2`$ $``$ $`\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{r^2}}\right)^1dr^2`$ (11)
$``$ $`r^2(d\theta ^2+sin^2\theta d\varphi ^2).`$
Now, considering the metric components $`g_{00}`$, $`g_{11}`$ and $`\frac{g_{00}}{r}`$ to be continuous across the boundary $`r=a`$ of the sphere and assuming for the total charge on the sphere

$`q(a)=Ka^n,`$ (12)
one can get the following cases of the gravitational mass (vide equations (53), (56), (61), (65), (69) and (72) of Section $`4`$ in Ray & Das (2002)) in the explicit forms with electric charge.

Case I (i): For $`n=1`$

$`m=q^2+a_0a_1\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^2+a_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^3,`$ (13)
(ii): For $`n=3`$

$`m=a_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)+4K^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^{5/3}+a_0a_1\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^{2/3},`$ (14)
Case II (i): For $`n=1`$

$`m={\displaystyle \frac{1}{W_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}}\left[W_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}(12K^2)+\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^2\left(C_1{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{K^2}}\right)\right]^{1/2}`$
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right]^3,`$ (15)
(ii): For $`n=3`$

$`m`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{W_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}}\left[W_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+C_1\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^{2/3}+(W_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}K^21)\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^{4/3}\right]^{1/2}`$ (16)
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right]2K^{1/3}q^{5/3},`$
Case III: For $`n=1`$

$`m={\displaystyle \frac{1+K^2}{C_3}}=(K^21)\left[C_3\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)2\right]\left[{\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right],`$ (17)
Case IV: For $`n=1`$

$`m=3C_6^2\left[3C_5+\left({\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right)^3\right]\left[{\displaystyle \frac{q}{K}}\right]^4,`$ (18)
where $`K`$, $`a_0`$, $`a_1`$, $`W_0`$, $`C_1`$, $`C_3`$, $`C_5`$ and $`C_6`$ all are constant quantities. Now, $`m`$ for the cases I(i), I(ii) and IV are as usual positive whereas for the rest of the cases II(i), II(ii) and III the conditions for positivity are $`(1/2)>K^2>(q^2/C_1)`$, $`K>(1/W_0)`$ and $`1<K<(C_3q/2)`$ respectively.

It is observed from the explicit forms of the above set of expressions that the effective gravitational mass $`m`$, along with the central pressures and densities at $`r=0`$ (vide equations (22), (27), (31), (40), (45) and (21), (28), (32), (39) respectively in Ray & Das (2002)), is related to the charge $`q`$ of equation (12) of the spherical system. Therefore, vanishing of the charge makes all the physical quantities including the gravitational mass also to vanish. This means that the gravitational mass originates from the electromagnetic field alone. Thus, the gravitational mass is purely ‘electromagnetic mass’ (Lorentz, 1904) and this type of model is known as ‘electromagnetic mass model’ in the literature (Feynman, 1964). It is relevant to note here that this particular important feature of the solution set, viz., the electromagnetic nature of the gravitational mass is obviously not available in the uncharged case of Bayin (1978) and thus indicates that the presence of charge allows for a wider range of behaviour.

### 3.2 Tolman’s solution VI

In the introduction we have mentioned that motivated by the work of Tolman (1939), a similar kind of new class of solution was found by Bayin (1978) and hence in view of the results of sub-section 3.1 related to Bayin’s work it will be interesting to examine the solutions of Tolman whether they are also a member of electromagnetic mass models. As a ready-made example we would like to present here the solution obtained by Pant & Sah (1979) to meet our, at least partial, requirement. For a static spherically symmetric distribution of charged fluid the solution set (vide equations (10a), (10b), (10c) and (11) in Pant & Sah (1979)) is as follows.

$`A^2=e^\nu =br^{2n},`$ (19)
$`B^2=e^\lambda =c,`$ (20)
$`\rho ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{16\pi r^2}}[1c(n1)^2],`$ (21)
$`p={\displaystyle \frac{1}{16\pi r^2}}[c(n+1)^21],`$ (22)
$`\sigma =\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi r^2}}[{\displaystyle \frac{c}{2}}\{1c(1+2nn^2)\}]^{1/2},`$ (23)
$`E^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2r^2}}[1c(1+2nn^2)],`$ (24)
where

$`b=a^{2n}\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a^2}}\right],`$ (25)
$`c=\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a^2}}\right]=\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2q^2}{a^2}}\right](1+2nn^2)^1.`$ (26)
The above set of solutions, in view of $`c`$, with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ and $`B=0`$ represents the charged analogue of Tolman’s (1939) solution VI and thus in the absence of the total charge $`q`$ reduces to the neutral one (the sub-case $`C`$ of uncharged fluid sphere in the Pant & Sah (1979)). Now, the equation (2) can be expressed in the form

$`B^2=1{\displaystyle \frac{2m(r)}{r}},`$ (27)
where the gravitational mass $`m(r)=M(r)+\mu (r)`$ being defined as

$`M(r)=4\pi {\displaystyle _0^r}\rho r^2𝑑r`$ (28)
and

$`\mu (r)={\displaystyle _0^r}(q^2/2r^2)𝑑r,`$ (29)
respectively the Schwarzschild mass and the mass equivalence of electromagnetic field. Hence, the total gravitational mass, $`m(r=a)`$, can be calculated as

$`m={\displaystyle \frac{na^2(2n)+2q^2}{2(1+2nn^2)a}}.`$ (30)
If we now make the specific choice $`n=0`$ for the parameter $`n`$ appearing in the above solution set then one get the following expressions.

$`A^2=\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a^2}}\right],`$ (31)
$`B^2=\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2m}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a^2}}\right]=\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2q^2}{a^2}}\right],`$ (32)
$`\rho (r)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi r^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a^2}}\right],`$ (33)
$`p(r)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi r^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a^2}}\right],`$ (34)
$`\sigma (r)=\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi r^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{q}{a}}\right]\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{2q^2}{a^2}}\right]^{1/2},`$ (35)
$`E(r)={\displaystyle \frac{q}{ar}},`$ (36)
and

$`m={\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{a}}.`$ (37)
Thus, for vanishing electric charge all the physical quantities including gravitational mass vanish and the spacetime becomes flat. It is interesting to note that, in the present situation, the equations (33) and (34) related to the isotropic pressure and matter density provide an equation of state $`\rho +p=0`$, which is known as the vacuum- or imperfect-fluid equation of state. As is evident, from the equations (21) and (22), this is not true for the general case when $`n0`$ and can be read as

$`\rho +p={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi r^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{n(a^22q^2)}{a^2(1+2nn^2)}}\right].`$ (38)
Hence starting from a perfect fluid type equation of state via $`n=0`$ we are arriving at the imperfect-fluid type equation of state and thus $`n`$ here is taking a definite and peculiar role for deciding the form of the equation of state. This particular aspect is also true via the equations (2) and (3) for the equations (19) and (20) which reduce to the equations (31) and (32) respectively, with $`n=0`$ when we get $`\nu +\lambda =0`$. This again, for the Reissner-Nordström metric (equation (11)) related to the spherically symmetric static charged fluid distribution, can be expressed in the form $`g_{00}g_{11}=1`$. Thus, in view of equations (2) and (3), we see that for the boundary condition $`\nu +\lambda =0`$ one can get $`\rho +p=0`$ and vice versa, so that $`\lambda =\nu p=\rho `$.111A coordinate-independent statement of the relation $`g_{00}g_{11}=1`$ and hence $`\nu +\lambda =0`$ is given by Tiwari et al. (1984). This result means that if $`\rho >0`$ then must be $`p<0`$ for the inside of the fluid sphere though, in general, $`\rho `$ and $`p`$ are positive for the condition $`0n1`$. This partially admits the comment by Ivanov that “… electromagnetic mass models all seem to have negative pressure”. Partially because, in our opinion, there are some examples of electromagnetic mass models where positive pressures are also available will be shown elsewhere.

## 4 Conclusions

We have revisited in the present paper the work already done by us (Ray & Das, 2002) and that one of Pant & Sah (1979) motivated by the fact that the gravitational mass $`m`$ for a charged matter distributions always can be seen to be divided into two parts, viz., (i) the Schwarzschild mass $`M(r)`$ and (ii) the mass equivalence of electromagnetic field $`\mu (r)`$ as is evident from the equation (27). Thus, the total mass is increasing due to electromagnetic energy (Florides, 1964; Mehra, 1980) which is obviously an extra feature in comparison to the neutral case. Keeping this aspect in mind we wanted to examine whether the gravitational mass obtained by us (Ray & Das, 2002) in one of our previous papers is of purely electromagnetic origin or not. We have, in the present simple investigation, shown that the charged generalized solutions of Bayin (1978) is purely of electromagnetic origin. In this connection, we have also shown, by citing the solution of Pant & Sah (1979), that the charged generalization of Tolman’s solution VI (1939) yields electromagnetic mass models which, of course, needs further investigations with a direct study of the Tolman’s whole set of solutions by inclusion of charge.

We would also like to mention here that the works done by different investigators on electromagnetic mass models so far are mainly concerned with the structure of the classical electron (special references are Gautreau, 1985 and Tiwari et al, 1986). Even though Tiwari et al. (1986) find astrophysically interesting Lane-Emden equations in connection to electromagnetic mass models but at the same time, instead of studying the stellar structures, they apply the radii of some of the models for the comparison with the classical electron radius. This particular aspect of electromagnetic mass models related to Lane-Emden equations in the astrophysical context needs further investigations.

As is mentioned in Ray & Das (2002), to justify the present work with a charged fluid distribution, that even though the astrophysical systems are by and large electrically neutral, recent studies do not rule out the possibility of the existence of massive astrophysical systems that are not electrically neutral (Treves & Turella, 1999). The mechanism, though not completely understood, is mainly related to the acquiring a net charge by accretion from the surrounding medium. On the other hand, there are some other views of acquiring charge by a compact star during its collapse from the supernova stage. In this regard it will be worth mentioning that to study the effect of electric charge in compact stars Ray et al. (2003) assume an ansatz such that $`\sigma =\alpha \rho `$ where $`\alpha `$ is related to the charge fraction $`f`$ as $`\alpha =869.24f`$ and show by numerical calculation that in order to see any appreciable effect on the phenomenology of the compact stars, the total electric charge is to be $`10^{20}`$ Coulomb. Therefore, in our opinion, even such a remote possibility gives enough scope to theoretical speculations and hence the corresponding modeling and investigations become as much pertinent for these cases as for the established neutral systems.

## Acknowledgments

One of the authors (SR) is thankful to the authority of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India, for providing Associateship programme under which a part of this work was carried out.


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# EcoLab: Agent Based Modeling for C++ programmers

## 1 EcoLab

EcoLab is an ABM system for C++ programmers. This is not the time or place to debate the merits of C++ over any other object oriented language. If you have chosen C++ as an implementation language for your models because of performance, expressibility, familiarity or compatibility with other software libraries, then ABM environments such as Swarm or Repast offer little support to you. In this case, you should consider EcoLab.

## 2 Scripting

EcoLab uses the Classdesc object descriptor technology. This provides a form of object reflection, or the ability to query an object’s internal structure at runtime. This may seem obvious to a Java or Objective C programmer, as object reflection is built into the language.

How is Classdesc used in EcoLab? The user codes their entire model as a class. Usually, there will only be one instantiated object of that class (the model). Most model instance variables, and model methods adhering to particular calling conventions are exposed to a TCL interpreter. This allows great flexibility to configure different sorts of experiments at runtime. For example, if your model class is:

```
class model_t {
public:
int tstep; double foo;
void step();
double average_something();
} model;

```

then by inserting the macro call `make_model(model)` into your code, the following TCL script is possible:

```
model.tstep 0
model.foo 0
while {[model.tstep]<100000} {
   model.step
   if {[model.tstep]%1000==0} {puts stdout [model.average_something]}
}

```

This initialises the instance variables, and runs the model for 100000 steps, writing out the average of something every 1000th timestep.

## 3 GUI mode for exploration

The TCL interpreter also has a complete GUI toolkit (Tk), and a visualisation and analysis toolkit (BLT). It is possible to turn the above script into a continuously updated plot by changing one line:

```
   if {[model.tstep]%1000==0} {
      set av_something [model.average_something]
      plot av av_something
}

```

With this ability to script experiments at runtime, one can use one script for exploratory visualisation or debugging, and another for batch production work. Items in common, such as the model’s parameters can be stored in a third file and included using TCL’s `source` command.

The main point is that it is not necessary to be proficient at TCL programming to be productive with EcoLab. Many example scripts exist in the source code that can be adapted for you use. However, a proficient TCL programmer can exploit a large amount of functionality to create some great visualisations — using Tk’s ability to handle pixmaps for instance. The jellyfish simulation example provided as part of the package is a case in point.

## 4 Object Browser

Using Classdesc to expose your C++ objects to the TCL environment has some other interesting features. EcoLab comes with an object browser, which allows the user to drill down into the model to see why a particular object is doing what it is doing. The object browser is EcoLab’s answer to Swarms probes. To use the object browser, just click on the “Object Browser” button on the GUI toolbar. This will pop a list of TCL procedures, and top level objects (procedures with “.” in their name). Clicking on objects pops up another box containing the procedures within that (corresponding to instance variables and methods) and objects (compound instance variables). Clicking on a procedure will execute that procedure (using any arguments you have provided) and displays the result. You can also arrange to have the procedure executed automatically every second to give a continuous update of (say) and instance variable.

## 5 Checkpoint/Restart

By invoking Classdesc on your model in this way, TCL commands are created for checkpointing and restarting your model, with no further coding required of your model (provided the complete state of your model is stored in the model object of course). So, if you are using a high performance computing bureau, which forces you to continuously checkpoint and restart your jobs to allow other peoples jobs to run, you can write something like the following TCL script:

```
if [file exists checkpoint] {
   model.restart checkpoint
} else {
   source model-parms
}

while {[model.tstep]<100000} {
   model.step
   if {[cputime] > 10000} {
      model.checkpoint checkpoint
      exit
   }
}

if {[model.tstep]<100000} {
  exec qsub myjob.tcl
}

```

which is self-submitting batch script in which each job only runs for less that 3 hours, but the chain of jobs continues until the calculation is complete.

## 6 Parallel Processing

EcoLab provides support for parallel processing using the MPI distributed memory programming model. By turning on the MPI flag at compile time, EcoLab will start an interpreter on each processor. Normally, your script will run on processor 0, but any TCL command can be run on all processors simultaneously with the `parallel` command. Plus, a method can be declared parallel, so when invoked, it will be invoked on all processors simultaneously. The ClassdescMP can be used to easily code communication between processors, or the full power of MPI used. At this point in time, it is the model implementor’s responsibility to arrange for objects to be distributed across the processors, however an experimental project called Graphcode will allow arbitrary agents on an arbitrary grid topology (graph) to be automatically distributed across parallel processors, even having dynamic updating of the object distribution to optimise load balancing.

## 7 Supported Machines

EcoLab is an open source project which depends on ANSI standard C++, TCL, Tk and BLT. The primary development environment is Linux, but by its adherence to standards, EcoLab has been successfully ported to Irix, Solaris, AIX, Tru64, Mac OSX and Windows (under Cygwin), often using the native C++ compiler rather than gcc. It should be noted that the Mac OSX port of EcoLab was completed about 6 months ago, and took about 2 days to do, which is one area in which it out competed Swarm. At present the interface depends on X-windows, work on a native Aqua interface is being planned in the next 6 months.

EcoLab has now been deployed for 5 distinctly different modelling projects. Each project has its own requirements, which are fed back into the core system where it is useful.

There are no plans for a Java interface. The aim of this project is to provide an environment for C++ programmers, not Java programmers who are already catered for with other packages.

We welcome contributers to the EcoLab project. The source code is managed by Peter Miller’s AEGIS system, so you will need to email Russell Standish to obtain a user login to access AEGIS. Anonymous readonly access to the repository is however already available via the EcoLab website, where you can pick a version of EcoLab at any revision level as a gzipped tarball. Unlike CVS, AEGIS ensures that the code compiles, and that some consistency checks are performed at code check in time. Plus whenever a branch is closed (EcoLab.4.Dx as opposed to EcoLab.4.x.Dy), further tests are performed to ensure that the code compiles and runs a test suite on all supported platforms.

## Acknowledgments

EcoLab is supported by a generous grant from the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC). Computing resources have been generously provided by Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications (ac3) for supporting different operating systems and testing parallel programming features.


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# Polarization of AGN Jets

## 1. Introduction

The Very Long Baseline Array111The VLBA is an instrument of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. (VLBA) has revolutionized the study of parsec-scale polarization from jets of active galactic nuclei (AGN) by allowing highly sensitive, multi-frequency, multi-epoch polarization studies for a large number of sources. In recent years, we have begun to use these capabilities to address a number of fundamental open questions regarding the structure, composition, environment and evolution of AGN jets.

Perhaps the most glaring (and difficult) of these open questions, is that after forty years of study, we still do not know whether AGN flows are primarily an electron-proton ($`e^{}p^+`$) plasma or a electron-positron ($`e^{}e^+`$) plasma. Another fundamental issue is that while the synchrotron radiation we observe is produced by a power-law particle energy spectrum, we do not know where (or how) that spectrum cuts off at low energy. These low energy particles are particularly important as they dominate the bulk kinetic energy of the jet (e.g. Celotti & Fabian 1993). On the fundamental question of jet structure, the full three dimensional magnetic field configuration of jets is still only vaguely understood. We know that jets contain a significant (and perhaps dominant) component of disordered magnetic fields which are shocked or sheared hydro-dynamically, but we do not know if the jets have an over-arching field structure (with helical, toroidal and/or poloidal components) which is related to the black-hole/accretion disk system.

## 2. 3-D Magnetic Field Structures of Jets

In the absence of Faraday rotation, linear polarization gives a measure of the net field order along the line of sight, projected onto the plane of the sky; however, interpretation of polarization patterns in jets is complicated by the fact that a variety of three-dimensional magnetic field models can produce very similar two dimensional polarization structures. One example is a helical magnetic field which will produce linear polarization that is either parallel (Stokes $`Q`$) or transverse (Stokes $`+Q`$) to the jet due to cancellation of the Stokes $`U`$ component from the back to the front of the jet. A toroidal field will also produce parallel polarization, and if viewed from an angle may have transverse polarization at the edges of the jet. Parallel or transverse polarization (as well as oblique polarization angles) can also be produced hydro-dynamically by shocking or shearing of magnetic fields.

Disentangling these effects is a difficult problem, and a first step is to catalog the types of polarization (fractional amounts and orientations) seen in jets. A great deal of work has been done to catalog and compare the parsec scale linear polarizations for a large number of AGN jets at a variety of wavelengths (e.g. Cawthorne et al. 1993, Gabuzda et al. 2000, Lister & Smith 2000, Lister 2001, Marscher et al. 2002, Pollack et al. 2003). Typical AGN cores are weakly polarized at the few percent level with higher polarization being revealed at higher frequencies, and jet features typically have $`510`$% polarization with a tail up to a few tens of percent. A number of conflicting reports have been published regarding the relative orientation of jet polarization to jet direction at $`\lambda 6`$ cm (Cawthorne et al. 1993; Gabuzda et al. 2000; Pollack et al. 2003); averaging over these results it seems that there is no relation for quasars, but BL Lac objects do tend to have an excess of parallel polarization with a peak near $`|\theta \chi |=0`$ degrees. Higher frequency results ($`\lambda \lambda `$ 1.3 & 0.7 cm), which are less subject to contamination by Faraday rotation, show an excess near $`0`$ degrees with a broad tail for both kinds of objects (Lister & Smith 2000, Lister 2001, & Marscher et al. 2002). Marscher et al. (2002) have noted that this distribution is consistent with oblique shocks.

Most parsec scale polarization observations to date are sensitive only to polarization in the brightest regions of jet emission. These regions are enhanced, most likely due to shocks or bends in the jet, and therefore the measured polarizations may not accurately reflect the full jet magnetic field structure. A excellent example is the source 1055$`+`$018 (Attridge et al. 1999) which with four hours of VLBA$`+`$Y1 time at $`\lambda `$ 6 cm reveals a remarkable sheath-like polarization structure around the main jet. This structure was not visible in two previous one hour VLBA observations also at $`\lambda `$ 6 cm (Attridge 1999). It is very important to study more sources with highly sensitive polarization observations to see if we are missing important pieces of the jet magnetic field structure.

Recent work by Asada (2002) and Gabuzda (2003, this volume) has suggested that jets may contain a significant toroidal component of magnetic field that is visible in the form of transverse Faraday rotation measure gradients. Gradients in rotation measure can also form if there is a non-uniform distribution in the external parsec-scale Faraday screen, so more work is necessary to be sure of this interpretation. However, the results are tantalizing, and important three dimensional magnetic field information can be gleaned from Faraday rotation if it can be shown that this rotation is occurring internal to the jet. Likewise, circular polarization can also yield constraints on the three dimensional field structure.

### 2.1. A Probe of Jet Hydrodynamics: Polarization Evolution

Observing the time evolution of jet magnetic fields is important for understanding the magneto-hydrodynamics of jets. The VLBA has made it possible to conduct rapid monitoring campaigns of parsec scale jet structure. For example, time sequences of 3C 120 made by Gomez et al. (2000) at $`\lambda `$ 1.3 cm, reveal a wealth of detailed variation in the observed polarization including a possible jet-cloud interaction. Interpreting these results in detail is extremely difficult and probably requires a new generation of hydrodynamic jet models which include magneto-hydrodynamics and full Stokes polarization propagation. Such models are on the way (see Gomez, J. 2003, this volume) and their first test will be to see if they can reproduce the average polarization behavior of jet components followed in recent monitoring programs.

In Homan et al. (2002) we analyzed observations of twelve AGN jets from a six epoch, dual-wavelength ($`\lambda \lambda `$ 2 & 1.3 cm) VLBA experiment to find year-long trends in polarization behavior of jet components over time and the fluctuations about those trends. Within our small sample, we found jet components tended to increase in fractional polarization as they moved down the jet. We also found there was a tendency for the polarization angles of jet components to rotate in the direction of being transverse to the jet. We argued that these two pieces of information suggested growing longitudinal field order in the jet. We also observed fluctuations in polarization position angles about the longer term trends, these fluctuations tended to be larger for more weakly polarized jet features as might be expected if the changes reflect internal changes in their magnetic field structure. With the possible exception of 3C 273, the polarization changes we observed could not be easily explained by Faraday rotation (or depolarization) and appeared to reflect real changes in the magnetic structure of jet features over time.

## 3. Faraday Rotation

Faraday rotation is the rotation of the plane of linear polarization during propagation of a radio wave through a magnetized plasma and is proportional to the square of the wavelength. The Faraday rotation we observe is the net effect along our line of sight: through our galaxy, across intergalactic space, through the host galaxy of the quasar, and even through the jet itself. However, it appears that Faraday rotation at centimeter wavelengths is dominated by screens external but near to the radio jet, probably in the narrow line region of the AGN (Taylor 1998, 2000).

Quasars typically have rotation measures of 1000 up to a few thousand radians/m2 in their core regions and on the order of 100 rad/m2 in their jets (Taylor 1998, 2000; Zavala & Taylor 2003). BL Lac objects are similar to quasars with perhaps a bit lower values in the core (Gabuzda et al. 2001,2003; Zavala & Taylor 2003). Galaxies have stronger Faraday screens than either quasars or BL Lacs and often have depolarized cores (Taylor et al. 2001; Zavala & Taylor 2002). Exceptions to the above rules do exist, the CSS quasar OQ172 was found to have 40,000 rad/m2 in its core (Udomprasert et al. 1997), and Attridge et al. (2003, this volume) have used 86 GHz VLBA results to show that a rotation measure gradient of $`30,000`$ rad/m2 must exist between two jet components in 3C 273. The existence of such a high rotation measure gradient in 3C 273, suggests the need for further high frequency, high resolution Faraday rotation measure studies of AGN cores.

Are we actually seeing narrow line clouds in these kinds of observations? With only a $`1`$% estimated covering factor for a uniform cloud distribution, Zavala & Taylor (2002) suggest that clouds may be entrained by the jet, perhaps in a boundary layer. There is some direct evidence for jet-cloud interactions with large rotation measures observed in bends of 3C 120 (Gomez et al. 2000), 0820$`+`$225 (Gabuzda et al. 2001), and 0548+165 (Mantovani et al. 2002).

If the Faraday rotation does occur in a boundary layer, the magnetic fields responsible for the rotation may be directly related to the magnetic field structure of the jet. Additionally, there may be significant Faraday rotation internal to the jet in some cases. We argued this was the case for 3C 279 to explain our circular polarization observations (Wardle et al. 1998), and Cotton et al. (2003) have seen what appears to be internal Faraday rotation in 3C 454. In addition to giving us information about the field structure of the jet, internal Faraday rotation is highly sensitive to the low energy end of the particle energy spectrum and combined with circular polarization observations may allow us to constrain that population.

## 4. Circular Polarization

Low resolution measurements made during the 1970s and early 1980s found circular polarization to be only a tiny fraction ($`0.1`$% was considered strongly polarized) of the integrated synchrotron emission from AGN jets (Weiler & de Pater 1983, and sources therein). In 1988, Jones published computer simulations of the radiative transfer in jets showing that local levels of circular polarization could exceed $`0.5`$%, and he suggested that high resolution (VLBI) circular polarization observations could provide important constraints on jet physics. Indeed we have found local levels of circular polarization exceeding $`0.5`$% in a handful of sources, including 3C 84, PKS 0528+134, PKS 0607-157, 3C 273, and 3C 279 (Wardle et al. 1998; Homan & Wardle 1999, 2003). Such strongly polarized sources are the exception, in general we find that only $`510`$% of sources have local circular polarization of $`0.3`$% or higher (Homan et al. 2001; pre-liminary results from the MOJAVE program, see Lister, M. 2003, this volume). When we do detect circular polarization, it is almost always associated with the VLBI core, although 3C 84 is a clear exception with well resolved structure in circular polarization (Homan & Wardle 1999, and ApJ submitted).

A potentially powerful diagnostic of circular polarization is the relationship between circular and linear polarization. In general, linear polarization levels exceed those for circular, but there was no other clear relationship for a sample of 40 sources we studied at $`\lambda `$ 6 cm (Homan et al. 2001). This work needs to be repeated at shorter wavelengths to eliminate possible contamination by Faraday depolarization of the linear. Interestingly, low luminosity AGN seem to be an exception to the above rule with circular polarization exceeding linear in Sgr A\* (Bower et al. 1999), M81\* (Brunthaler et al. 2001), and M87 (recent MOJAVE result, unpublished data). In our original study (Homan & Wardle 1999), the two lowest luminosity objects in which we detected circular polarization, 3C 84 and 3C 273, also had as much or more circular polarization than linear. This relation between luminosity and the linear to circular polarization ratio needs to be investigated further; however, it may simply be due to the close proximity of the low luminosity objects which gives better linear resolution. In those nearby objects, what we are seeing as the core is embedded in a higher density environment which could lead to external depolarization of the linear polarization.

A key open question in the study of circular polarization is the generation mechanism. Circular polarization in AGN jets may be produced either as a direct (intrinsic) component of synchrotron radiation or through the Faraday conversion process which converts linear to circular polarization. Intrinsic circular polarization requires a significant charge imbalance in the radiating particles (an $`e^{}p^+`$ jet) and strong uni-directional magnetic fields in the jet. This combination is precisely the combination that will lead to very large amounts of internal Faraday rotation unless the cutoff in the relativistic particle energy spectrum is rather high, $`\gamma _i>100`$ (Wardle 1977). Faraday conversion on the other hand, requires a large number of low energy relativistic particles in the jet to do the conversion and hence a relatively low cutoff in the particle energy spectrum, $`\gamma _i<20`$ (Wardle et al. 1998). A low cutoff in the particle energy spectrum may imply a jet dominated by $`e^{}e^+`$ pairs on kinetic luminosity grounds (e.g. Celotti & Fabian 1993), and we argued this is the case for 3C 279 (Wardle et al. 1998), but these are difficult arguments to make conclusively. Theoretically (e.g. Jones 1988) it appears easier to generate large amounts of circular polarization through the Faraday conversion process, but direct observational evidence favoring one mechanism over the other remains scarce (e.g. Homan & Wardle 2003).

Another important open question is the sign consistency of circular polarization in individual AGN. A consistent sign of circular polarization would indicate a consistent underlying magnetic field structure, such as the poloidal field direction or the twist of a helical field. Komessaroff et al. (1984) found a tendency for objects in their sample to show the same sign of circular polarization over their three to five year observing window. We found the same to be true over a one year period for sources undergoing strong core outbursts (Homan & Wardle 1999). In Homan et al. (2001), we compared recent circular polarization results to those from $``$20 years ago, and found in five of six cases the same sign of circular polarization today as in the earlier measurements. On the basis of these small statistics, we speculated that long-term consistency in the sign of circular polarization may be a general property of AGN, with the sign set by the super massive black hole/accretion disk system.

Bower et al. (2002) have shown convincingly that Sgr A\* has indeed maintained the same sign of circular polarization over the last 20 years. Our time baseline for VLBA results is also growing. Combining results from a number of programs (Homan & Wardle 1999; Homan, unpublished data; M. Lister, private communication; pre-liminary MOJAVE results), there is now nearly seven years of VLBA data on the superluminal quasars 3C 273 and 3C 279 at 15 or 22 GHz. The sign of circular polarization in those objects has remained the same over that period and the signs observed today match those measured $``$20 years ago at lower frequency (Weiler & de Pater 1983). Despite this progress, we still need better observational evidence that sources in general have a preferred sign of circular polarization and to find on what timescale any preferred sign may persist. Indeed, the fact that there is clear evidence for changes in sign in some cases (e.g. Aller et al. 2003) indicates that more monitoring is needed to determine if sign changes of this type represent fundamental changes in overall jet magnetic field structure or stochastic changes in the tangled component of magnetic field.

## 5. The Future

The future looks bright for parsec scale polarization studies of AGN jets. A number of fundamental questions regarding the physics of jets and their environment remain open, and polarization can provide useful insights to many of them. Over the next few years, observers will continue to exploit the unique capabilities of the VLBA to study polarization. In studying the three-dimensional magnetic field structures of jets, Faraday corrected polarization maps will be important to remove the Faraday rotation which plagues images made at lower frequency. Longer integrations and greater sensitivity will also play a key role by uncovering the full polarization structure of the jet, as in the case of 1055$`+`$018. Faraday rotation studies and circular polarization observations may give important additional information about the three-dimensional structure of jet magnetic fields. And following the time evolution of polarization will continue to give us a better handle on the magneto-hydrodynamics of jets.

In the study of Faraday screens surrounding jets, higher frequency observations will measure and resolve the large Faraday depths surrounding VLBI cores. Studies of the rotation measure distribution transverse to jets will also be important for evaluating models of toroidal/helical field structures. Jet-cloud interactions seen through the effects of Faraday rotation are particularly intriguing for what they might reveal about both jets and clouds. Clear evidence for internal Faraday rotation would also be very important as it would help to constrain the low energy end of the particle distribution in jets.

Studies of circular polarization need longer time baselines to better evaluate the issue of sign consistency in individual sources. Better spectral studies of circular polarization are also crucially important to constrain the emission mechanism; such studies will require enhanced sensitivity and improved calibration techniques so that several frequencies can be observed quasi-simultaneously. Higher resolution studies will also be very useful to alleviate confusion due to the inhomogeneous VLBI core and to resolve the region where circular polarization is actually generated.

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text:
# Microlensing of Elliptical Sources by Fold Caustics

## 1. Introduction

Gravitational lens caustics have proven enormously useful in studies of a broad range of astrophysical phenomena. Caustics are closed curves that describe the set of source positions where the Jacobian of the mapping from source plane to image plane induced by the lens vanishes. The magnification of a point source on a caustic in formally infinite. Caustics are composed of two different types of singularities: folds and cusps. Folds are smooth, curved lines that meet at cusp points. Cusps are higher-order singularities where the tangent to the caustic curve is undefined. The majority of the length of a typical caustic curve is well-described by a simple fold singularity, and therefore fold caustics are generally more common. A source sufficiently close to a fold caustic is lensed into a pair of equal-magnification, opposite-parity images whose magnification diverges as $`(\mathrm{\Delta }u_{})^{1/2}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }u_{}`$ is the perpendicular separation of the source from the caustic. These are the two images that are created locally by the fold caustic. There will generally be other images created by the global potential of the lens that are not associated with the caustic. However, these images will typically behave in a smooth and continuous manner near the the caustic. Here we consider the case of microlensing of sources near fold caustics. In this case, the individual images are unresolved, and only the total magnification of all the images is observable. Generally, microlensed sources move on relatively short time scales, and therefore the change in magnification as a function of time, i.e. a light curve, is observable. Due to the divergence in magnification as a source crosses a fold caustic, the light curve can be used to study sources at higher spatial and angular resolution, than would be possible with conventional techniques.

Caustics have been proposed or implemented to study objects ranging in scale from planets to quasars. Applications relevant to the discussion here include the direct detection and characterization of close-in extrasolar giant planets and associated structures via their reflected light (Graff & Gaudi, 2000; Lewis & Ibata, 2000; Ashton & Lewis, 2001; Gaudi, Chang, & Han, 2003), the precise measurement of stellar limb-darkening (Albrow et al., 1999, 2001; Fields et al., 2003; Abe et al., 2003), and the resolution of the central engines of quasars (e.g. Grieger, Kayser, & Refsdal 1988; Grieger, Kayser, & Schramm 1991; Gould & Miralda-Escude 1997; Agol & Krolik 1999; Goicoechea et al. 2003). We note that, for systems composed of point masses, extended caustics occur only for composite lensing bodies, the simplest example being a binary star. A single star also produces formally divergent magnification, at the point at which the observer, lens, and source are perfectly aligned. Such fortuitously aligned systems can then be used to resolve stellar surfaces. Indeed, microlensing by a point mass has been proposed as a tool to study limb darkening (Valls-Gabaud, 1998; Hendry et al., 1998; Gaudi & Gould, 1999; Heyrovsky, 2003), stellar spots (Heyrovsky & Sasselov, 2000; Hendry, Bryce, & Valls-Gabaud, 2002), and ellipticity (Heyrovsky & Loeb, 1997). The lens and source must be aligned to better than the angular size of the star for the source to be resolved in single-lens events. However, the source size for typical Galactic microlensing events is less than a few percent of the angular Einstein ring radius of the lens. Therefore, caustic-crossing binary-microlensing events are more common than source transit events by single stars.

Analytic results for the magnification near fold caustics have been derived only for circularly-symmetric sources, and only for a few special functional forms for the surface brightness profile of such sources (see, e.g. Schneider, Ehlers & Falco 1992; Albrow et al. 1999; Dominik 2003). However, for a number of applications, one is interested in more complex source geometries. Here we consider one such geometry that should occur frequently in nature: elliptical sources. In §2 we derive a simple, analytic expression for the change in magnification relative to a circular source that is accurate to third order in the ellipticity. We apply our results in §3, considering the measurement of stellar oblateness and limb-darkening using fold caustic crossings (§3.1), the possibility of measuring the oblateness of giant extrasolar planets (§3.2), and the resolution of a quasar accretion disk (§3.3). We summarize and conclude in §4.

## 2. Elliptical Sources Near Fold Caustics

The total magnification of a point source with an angular separation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }u_{}`$ normal to a simple linear fold caustic is (Schneider, Ehlers & Falco, 1992),

$$A(\mathrm{\Delta }u_{})=\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }u_{}}{u_r}\right)^{1/2}H(\mathrm{\Delta }u_{}),$$
(1)
where $`u_r`$ is related to the derivatives of the lens mapping at the fold (see Schneider, Ehlers & Falco 1992; Petters, Levine, & Wambsganss 2001; Gaudi & Petters 2002), and $`H(x)`$ is the Heaviside step function. Here and throughout, all angular separations on the sky will be in units of the angular Einstein ring radius of the lens, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}=(2R_\mathrm{S}/D)^{1/2}`$, where $`R_\mathrm{S}=2GM/c^2`$ is the Schwarzschild radius of mass $`M`$, $`D=D_{\mathrm{ol}}D_{\mathrm{os}}/D_{\mathrm{ls}}`$, and $`D_{\mathrm{os}}`$, $`D_{\mathrm{os}}`$, and $`D_{\mathrm{ls}}`$ are the distances between the observer-lens, observer-source, and lens-source. For cosmological objects, angular diameter distances should be used.

The magnification of a finite source near a fold is just the convolution of equation (1) over the source,

$$A_{\mathrm{fs}}=\frac{_Dd𝐮I(𝐮)A(𝐮)}{_Dd𝐮I(𝐮)},$$
(2)
where $`I(𝐮)`$ is the surface brightness distribution of the source, and $`D`$ is the solid angle extended by the source.

For the simple case of a uniform–surface–brightness source, adopting a polar coordinate system with origin at the center of the source (see Figure 1), equation (2) can be rewritten as

$$A(\eta ;e,\varphi )=\left(\frac{u_r}{\rho }\right)^{1/2}\frac{1}{\pi }_0^{2\pi }d\theta _0^{r(\theta ;e,\varphi )/\rho }dx$$

$$\times \frac{x}{[\eta +x\mathrm{cos}\theta ]^{1/2}}H(\eta +x\mathrm{cos}\theta ).$$
(3)
Here, $`\rho `$ is the characteristic angular size of the source, defined such that the total area extended by the source is $`\pi \rho ^2`$ (i.e. $`\rho =r`$ for a circle, and $`\rho =\sqrt{ab}`$ for an ellipse); $`r(\theta ;e,\varphi )`$ is the outer boundary of the source. We have also defined the dimensionless angle $`xu/\rho `$, and distance from the caustic, $`\eta \mathrm{\Delta }u_{}/\rho `$. The inner integral in equation (3) can be evaluated analytically, although care must be taken to establish the limits of integration so that the condition $`\eta +x\mathrm{cos}\theta >0`$ is met.

For a circular source, $`r=\rho `$, and the magnification has the well-known form (see, e.g. Schneider, Ehlers & Falco 1992),

$$A(\eta ,0)=\left(\frac{u_r}{\rho }\right)^{1/2}G_0(\eta ),$$
(4)
where

$$G_n(\eta )\pi ^{1/2}\frac{(n+1)!}{(n+1/2)!}_{\mathrm{max}(\eta ,1)}^1dx$$

$$\times \frac{(1x^2)^{n+1/2}}{(x+\eta )^{1/2}}H(1+\eta ).$$
(5)
The function $`G_0(\eta )`$ is shown in Figure 1.

We now consider a uniform source with arbitrary ellipticity $`e`$. We first address the case of $`\eta >1`$, i.e. prior to the source’s entry onto the caustic, for which the limits of integration of the inner integral in equation (3) are $`(0,r/\rho )`$ and the limits of the outer integral are $`(0,2\pi )`$. The magnification is then,

$$A(\eta ;e,\varphi )=\left(\frac{u_r}{\rho }\right)^{1/2}\frac{1}{\pi }_0^{2\pi }d\theta \frac{2}{3\mathrm{cos}^2\theta }$$

$$\times \{[(r/\rho )\mathrm{cos}\theta 2\eta ][(r/\rho )\mathrm{cos}\theta +\eta ]^{1/2}+2\eta ^{3/2}\}.$$
(6)
For an ellipse with semi-major axis $`a`$, $`r=a[\mathrm{cos}^2\alpha +(1e^2)^1\mathrm{sin}^2\alpha ]^{1/2}`$, where $`\alpha \theta \varphi `$, and $`\varphi `$ is the angle of the major axis with respect to the normal to the caustic (see Figure 1 for an illustration). Note that we have centered the coordinate system at the center (rather than at the focus) of the ellipse. An ellipse with area $`\pi \rho ^2`$ has $`a=\rho (1e^2)^{1/4}`$, and thus we have,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{r}{\rho }}`$ $`=`$ $`[\mathrm{cos}^2\alpha +(1e^2)^1\mathrm{sin}^2\alpha ]^{1/2}(1e^2)^{1/4},`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}e^2\mathrm{cos}2\alpha +O(e^4),`$ (8)
Inserting equation (8) into equation (2), keeping terms only up to order $`e^2`$, and discarding terms that are odd under $`\theta \theta `$, we find after some algebra,

$$A(\eta ;e,\varphi )=A(\eta ,0)+\left(\frac{u_r}{\rho }\right)^{1/2}e^2\mathrm{cos}(2\varphi )E(\eta ),$$
(9)
where we have defined the function

$$E(\eta )\frac{1}{4\pi }_0^{2\pi }d\theta \frac{\mathrm{cos}2\theta }{(\mathrm{cos}\theta +\eta )^{1/2}},(\mathrm{for}\eta >1)$$
(10)
which can be expressed in terms of elliptic integrals.

These results assume that the source is off the caustic. During caustic crossing, when $`|\eta |1`$, the limits of integration become complicated. However, in the limit of $`e0`$, it is easy to see that the last equation would be modified as

$$E(\eta )\frac{1}{4\pi }_0^{2\pi }d\theta \frac{\mathrm{cos}2\theta }{(\mathrm{cos}\theta +\eta )^{1/2}}H(\mathrm{cos}\theta +\eta ).$$

$$(\mathrm{for}\left|(|\eta |1)\right|e^2/4)$$
(11)
This function is shown in Figure 2. In fact, equation (9), together with (11), is valid to third order in $`e`$ for nearly all values of $`\eta `$. This is because, for small $`e`$, the appropriate limits of integration of equation (3) are approximately equal for an elliptical and circular source. The small changes to the integration limits introduce $`O(e^2)`$ corrections to a quantity that already includes $`O(e^2)`$ terms; the accuracy of this statement can also be verified directly in the numerical results displayed in Figure 3 below. Since changes to the integration limits are small, the difference in magnification between an elliptical and circular source can be calculated simply by taking the difference between the radius of an ellipse and circle, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r=(r\rho )`$, times the area element $`r\mathrm{d}r\mathrm{d}\theta `$, weighted by the local magnification, and integrated over all angles such that $`\mathrm{cos}\theta +\eta >0`$. However, this approximation breaks down for $`|\eta |1`$, where the limb of the source is near the caustic. First consider sources just exiting the caustic with $`\eta 1`$. For $`0\varphi 45^{}`$, the limb of a circular source will exit the caustic first, whereas part of the limb of an elliptical source will still be inside the caustic. The situation is reversed for $`45^{}\varphi 90^{}`$, when the elliptical source will exit the caustic first. This effect is not accounted for in equation (11). This formalism also breaks down near $`\eta =1`$ for similar reasons. As a result, equation (11) cannot be used when $`\left|(|\eta |1)\right|e^2/4`$.

Since there are no terms containing odd powers of $`e`$, corrections to equation (9) are of order $`e^4`$. Therefore, the approximation is very accurate for rather high values of the ellipticity. We find that it predicts the magnification to better than $`1\%`$ for $`e0.3`$ and $`\left|(|\eta |1)\right|e^2/4`$. Figure 3 compares the difference in magnification given by equations (9) and (11), with the exact calculation using equation (3) for three different values of the ellipticity, $`e=0.5,0.3`$, and $`0.05`$.

So far, we have parameterized the magnification in terms of $`\eta `$, the perpendicular angular separation of the center of the source from the caustic. To convert to magnification as a function of time $`t`$, we can replace $`\eta (tt_0)/\mathrm{\Delta }t`$, where $`t_0`$ is the time when the center of the source crosses the caustic, and we have defined $`\mathrm{\Delta }t\rho t_E\mathrm{csc}\gamma `$. Here $`t_E`$ is the time is takes the source to cross an angle $`\theta _E`$, and $`\gamma `$ is the angle the trajectory of the center of the source makes with respect to the caustic. One cannot constrain $`t_E`$ and $`\gamma `$ separately from a measurement of $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ using observations of a single linear fold caustic crossing, since $`t_E`$ is degenerate with $`\gamma `$. However, with two crossings, which will generally have two different values of $`\gamma `$, both parameters can be measured.

In terms of detectability, the quantity of interest is root-mean-square (RMS) fractional deviation $`\sigma `$ between an elliptical and circular source. Under the approximation equation (9), this is simply

$$\sigma (e,\varphi )=Ae^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi ,$$
(12)
where $`A(\eta _2\eta _1)^1_{\eta _1}^{\eta _2}d\eta E(\eta )/(G_0(\eta )+0.2)`$ is the RMS of the normalized fractional deviation due to ellipticity over the range $`(\eta _1,\eta _2)`$. The total magnification of images not associated with the caustic is generally of order unity. For typical source sizes of $`\rho 0.05`$, the mean total magnification of the fold images during the crossing ($`|\eta |1`$) is $`\rho ^{1/2}5`$. We have therefore assumed a $`20\%`$ contribution from images unrelated to the fold caustic. For $`1\eta 1.5`$, $`A0.3`$. We note that this value of $`A`$ depends not only on the adopted value of the contribution from images unrelated to the source, but also on the time-interval $`(\eta _1,\eta _2)`$ over which the RMS is evaluated. Changing this interval will increase or decrease the value of $`A`$, and therefore change the evaluated RMS fractional deviation. We have chosen the interval $`1\eta 1.5`$, because this essentially the largest interval where the deviation from ellipticity is significant (see Figure 2), and therefore this is the interval of interest in terms of signal-to-noise.

Figure 4 shows the RMS deviation in this range as a function of $`e`$ and $`\varphi `$, for both the approximation in equation (12), and the exact calculation. It is clear the the approximation is excellent for $`e0.3`$. It is interesting to note that the deviation due to ellipticity vanishes for some value of $`\varphi `$, for all values of $`e`$. For $`e1`$, this occurs at $`\varphi =45^{}`$, whereas this null shifts to larger values of $`\varphi `$ as $`e1`$. Interestingly, for large ellipticities, the light curve from a circular source is degenerate with that from an ellipse with its major axis aligned nearly parallel to the caustic.

It is clear from the form of equation (9) that one cannot measure the ellipticity of a source from one caustic crossing alone; rather one measures only the quantity $`e^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$. If the source crosses multiple caustics, each of which will generally have a different value of $`\varphi `$, then it will be possible to measure $`e`$ and $`\varphi `$ separately.

## 3. Applications

### 3.1. Stellar Oblateness and Limb Darkening

Microlensing has been proposed and employed as a method of studying various topics in stellar astrophysics (see, e.g. Gould 2001 for a review). The fold caustic-crossings created by binary-lens events toward the Galactic bulge and Magellanic clouds are exceptionally useful in this regard, as they are relatively frequent111Approximately $`10\%`$ of all microlensing events are caustic-crossing binary-lens events (Alcock et al., 2000; Udalski et al., 2000), whereas less than a few percent of microlensing events are single-lens events in which the source is resolved. Therefore, the majority of events for which it is possible to resolve the source are binary events., and they can be anticipated (Jaroszyński & Mao, 2001).

Here we consider whether the oblateness of stars can be measured in caustic-crossing binary-lens events. The oblateness $`f`$ of a star is defined as the fractional difference between its equatorial and polar radii. This can be related to its rotation rate (e.g. Seager & Hui 2002),

$$f=\frac{R^3}{2GM}\left(\frac{P}{2\pi }\right)^2,$$
(13)
where $`M`$, $`R`$, and $`P`$ are the mass, radius, and rotation period of the star, respectively. The ellipticity of the star is then $`e=[1(f+1)^2]^{1/2}`$.

We first estimate the distribution of ellipticities of giant stars in the Galactic bulge. Olech (1996) has compiled a catalog of miscellaneous periodic variable stars in the Galactic bulge found by the OGLE II microlensing survey, which includes the period, de-reddened color and magnitude of each star. Most of these stars are red ($`VI>1`$), and are in the giant branch or red clump. Olech (1996) argues that most of these red variables, which comprise $`1\%`$ of all stars in this part of the color-magnitude diagram, are likely to be chromospherically-active (i.e. spotted) stars. Under the assumption that all are single stars, and that the measured period corresponds to the rotation period of the star, we use this catalog to estimate the distribution of oblateness for such chromospherically-active stars in the bulge. Since these stars are likely bulge giants, they will have masses of $`MM_{}`$. We estimate their angular radii from their $`(VI)_0`$ color and $`I_0`$ magnitude, employing the color-surface brightness relation of van Belle (1999), as presented in Albrow et al. (2000). We then determine their physical radii by assuming that they are at a distance of $`8\mathrm{kpc}`$. We determine the oblateness and ellipticity of each star using equation (13).

The three-dimensional ellipticity of a source is not observable in caustic-crossing events, rather only the ellipticity projected on the plane of the sky, $`e_{}=e(1\mathrm{cos}^2i)`$. Here $`i`$ is the angle between the line-of-sight and the rotation axis of the star. For a ensemble of stars, this angle will be distributed uniformly in $`\mathrm{cos}i`$. The probability distribution of $`e_{}/e`$ is thus, $`P(e_{}/e)=\frac{1}{2}[1(e_{}/e)]^{1/2}`$.

We note that there is a selection effect that introduces a bias in our determination of the distribution of projected ellipticities, which we make no attempt to correct. Nearly pole-on stars will have smaller variability amplitudes, and therefore will be preferentially missed by the OGLE survey. Therefore, our assumption that the distribution of $`\mathrm{cos}i`$ is uniform is not actually correct for this sample. We expect this bias to be relatively small, because systems have to be very close to pole-on to be missed (due to the excellent quality of the OGLE photometry), and because this bias will largely be washed out by the intrinsic scatter in the amplitudes of the photometric modulation due to, e.g. variable numbers and distributions of spots.

Figure 5 shows the resulting distribution of projected ellipticities for the 551 stars from the Olech (1996) catalog. The median ellipticity is $`e=0.07`$, with $`20\%`$ of stars have $`e>0.2`$. We relate the projected ellipticity to the RMS light curve deviation $`\sigma `$ by integrating equation (12) over $`\varphi `$, which yields $`\sigma 0.2e_{}^2`$. The median value is $`\sigma 0.1\%`$, with $`15\%`$ of stars expected to produce RMS deviations $`1\%`$.

Current microlensing follow-up efforts can regularly achieve single-exposure precisions of $`1\%`$ on bright giant stars. Therefore, if the majority of giant stars in the bulge have rotation periods that are similar to those in the Olech (1996) sample, then $`1020\%`$ of all caustic-crossing events should show deviations due to the stellar oblateness. Whether or not chromospherically quiescent stars should have similar rotation periods to active stars is not clear. Our analysis demonstrates that this question could be answered with a sample of $`30`$ precise, well-covered caustic-crossing events.

One potential complication to the measurement of oblateness is limb-darkening. For a circular, limb-darkened source with radial surface brightness profile of the form

$$I(r)=1\mathrm{\Gamma }\left\{1\frac{3}{2}\left[1\left(\frac{r}{\rho }\right)^2\right]^{1/2}\right\},$$
(14)
the magnification of a limb-darkened source is (Albrow et al., 1999),

$$A(\eta ;\mathrm{\Gamma })=A(\eta ,0)+\left(\frac{u_r}{\rho }\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }[G_{1/2}(\eta )G_0(\eta )].$$
(15)
The form for the surface-brightness profile given in equation (14) was introduced in (Albrow et al., 1999). It is has the same behavior as the usual linear limb-darkening parameterization, but has the advantage that there is no net flux associated with the limb-darkening. The normalized limb-darkening function $`G_{1/2}(\eta )G_0(\eta )`$ is shown in Figure 2.

It is clear that the form of the deviation due to the limb-darkening is qualitatively similar to the deviation due to oblateness for $`\varphi >45^{}`$, such that a limb-darkening circular source with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2e^2\mathrm{cos}(2\varphi )`$ approximately reproduces the light curve of a uniform elliptical source with parameters $`e,\varphi `$. The factor of two is the ratio of the RMS deviations of $`E(\eta )`$ and $`G_{1/2}(\eta )G_0(\eta )`$ for $`1\eta 1`$. The value of $`e`$ required to produce a given limb-darkening $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is plotted in Figure 6, for several values of $`\varphi `$. Figure 2 shows an example, for a limb-darkened circular source with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.5`$, and a uniform, elliptical source with $`e=0.5`$ and $`\varphi =90^{}`$. Other examples are shown in Figure 3. The degeneracy is only approximate, however the two curves agree well except near the beginning and end of the caustic crossing. Note that, in general, the time when the source exits the caustic (near $`\eta 1`$) will be different for circular and elliptical sources of equal area.

Of course, stars will, in general, be both oblate and limb-darkened. We find numerically that for small ellipticities, the light curve of an elliptical, limb-darkened source is well-approximated by the superposition of the effects of limb-darkening and ellipticity. In the optical to near-infrared, limb-darkening parameters for typical microlensing stars are in the range $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.30.7`$ (Fields et al., 2003), and therefore limb-darkening effect will typically dominate over the effect of ellipticity. However, given the extraordinary precision of recent limb-darkening measurements (Fields et al., 2003; Abe et al., 2003), it is not clear that the effect of oblateness can be ignored. In particular, the inconsistency claimed by Fields et al. (2003) between derived limb-darkening parameters of the K3 III source of microlensing event EROS BLG-2000-5 and stellar atmospheric model model predictions may be partly reconciled by allowing for stellar oblateness. Fortunately, in this case a spectrum is available from which the $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ of the star can be constrained. However, in the future, modelers should be aware of this possible contamination to limb-darkening measurements.

How can oblateness be distinguished from limb-darkening? First, since the effects are not completely degenerate, this may be possible to distinguish between them simply from high-precision, single-color measurements. Second, the oblateness signal is expected to be achromatic, whereas limb-darkening depends strong on wavelength. Finally, one can use multiple caustic crossings to attempt to distinguish between limb-darkening and oblateness: a second caustic crossing can be anticipated, and in general, it would occur at a different angle $`\varphi `$ from the first.

### 3.2. Oblateness of Extrasolar Planets

Graff & Gaudi (2000) and Lewis & Ibata (2000) demonstrated that close-in, giant planetary companions to the source stars of binary microlensing events can be detected if the planet crosses a fold caustic, which magnifies the reflected starlight to detectable levels. Subsequently, Ashton & Lewis (2001) and Gaudi, Chang, & Han (2003) explored the detectability of structures associated with planets using this method, such as the planetary phase, atmospheric features, satellites, and rings. These authors found that, while the planet itself may be detectable, as well as variations due to the planet phase and associated rings, all other features are likely to be undetectable with foreseeable telescopes.

Can the oblateness of giant planets be detected via this method? Gaudi, Chang, & Han (2003) calculated the expected signal-to-noise ratio $`Q_p`$ of the primary planet signal for a typical event. They found $`Q_p150(D/100\mathrm{m})^2(a/0.05\mathrm{AU})^2`$, where $`D`$ is the telescope aperture and $`a`$ is the semi-major axis of the planet orbit. From equation (12), the signal-to-noise ratio $`Q_e`$ of the deviation due to ellipticity, averaged over all $`\varphi `$, can be related to $`Q_p`$ by

$$Q_e0.2e^2Q_p30e^2\left(\frac{D}{100\mathrm{m}}\right)^2\left(\frac{a}{0.05\mathrm{AU}}\right)^2.$$
(16)
Thus we can expect signal-to-noise ratios of less than unity for the deviation due to ellipticity, unless the ellipticity is quite large, $`e0.2`$. On the other hand, close-in giant planets with $`a0.2\mathrm{AU}`$ are expected to be tidally locked to their parent star, and therefore their oblateness due to rotation are expected to be quite small, $`f0.3\%`$ or $`e10\%`$ (Seager & Hui, 2002). Planets whose rotation periods have not been synchronized with their orbital periods may have large oblateness. For example Jupiter has an oblateness of $`f0.065`$, which corresponds to an eccentricity of $`e0.34`$. Unfortunately, the amount of reflected light, and therefore the signal-to-noise ratio, falls off as $`a^2`$, decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio of the planet signal by a factor of $`16`$ for tidally-unaffected planets with $`a0.2`$, and therefore rendering the distant planets too faint for the oblateness signal to be detectable, even if they are rapidly rotating.

### 3.3. Accretion Disks

Numerous authors have considered the idea of using microlensing of multiply-imaged quasars to resolve the surface brightness distribution of the central accretion disk. Studies range from theoretical examinations of the feasibility and details of the method itself (e.g., Grieger, Kayser, & Refsdal 1988; Grieger, Kayser, & Schramm 1991; Agol & Krolik 1999), to detailed fitting of light curves of the lens Q2237+0305 (e.g., Yonehara 2001; Shalyapin et al. 2002; Goicoechea et al. 2003; Kochanek 2003). The majority of these studies considered source models of face-on accretion disks. This assumption is generally not appropriate for standard geometrically-thin accretion disks: disks are more likely to be seen edge-on than face-on. Here we briefly consider the signature of inclined accretion disks on fold caustic-crossing light curves, and in the process uncover a degeneracy between the inclination and position angle for disks with self-similar intensity profiles. For simplicity, we consider only linear fold caustics. However, we note that this assumption may be inappropriate for typical quasar microlensing scenarios, which have relatively large sources, and optical depths to microlensing near unity (Wyithe, Webster, & Turner, 2000; Kochanek, 2003). Lensing of an inclined disk by a point mass was considered by (Heyrovsky & Loeb, 1997).

We consider a standard, optically-thick, geometrically-thin accretion disk (Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973). The disk radiates locally as a blackbody with temperature,

$$T(r)=T_\nu \left(\frac{r}{R_\nu }\right)^{3/4}\left[1\left(\frac{r}{3R_\mathrm{S}}\right)^{1/2}\right]^{1/4},$$
(17)
where $`r`$ refers to the radial distance of a (face-on) disk from the center, and we have assumed an inner disk edge of $`3R_\mathrm{S}`$. Here $`R_\nu `$ is the radius at which the local temperature of the disk matches the wavelength of observations, i.e. where $`T(r)=T_\nu =h\nu /k`$. Under the assumption of a standard thin-disk model, $`R_\nu `$ can be related to the mass of the black hole and the mass accretion rate. The surface brightness profile is then,

$$I_\nu (r)\left(\mathrm{e}^{T_\nu /T(r)}1\right)^1.$$
(18)
Note that we have ignored all relativistic and Doppler effects. Figure 7 shows the normalized surface brightness profile for the assumption of $`R_\nu =10R_\mathrm{S}`$, which roughly corresponds to the value found by Kochanek (2003) from an analysis of OGLE light curves of Q2237+0305 in the $`V`$-band, corresponding to rest-frame $`2000`$Å. We also show surface brightness profiles for $`R_\nu =2^{4/3}10R_\mathrm{S}`$ and $`R_\nu =2^{4/3}10R_\mathrm{S}`$, i.e. for half and twice the frequency of observations, respectively.

We calculate the light curves by first determining the image areas of a finite number of concentric elliptical annuli using the exact form for the magnification (Eq. 3). The ellipticity of a disk with inclination angle $`i`$ (where $`i=0`$ is face on) is $`e=(1\mathrm{cos}^2i)^{1/2}`$. We weight each annulus by the local surface brightness, which is simply given by equation (18), with $`r`$ replaced by the semi-major axis of the elliptical annulus. The magnification is then the sum over all annuli of the surface-brightness weighted image area, divided by the surface-brightness weighted area of the source. We integrate out to $`r=10R_\nu `$, beyond which we find that the contribution to the magnification is negligible. Figure 7 shows light curves for a standard thin accretion disk with inclination $`i=30^{}`$ and position angle relative to the caustic normal of $`\varphi =15^{}`$. The units of time are $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=R_\nu /v_e`$, where $`v_e`$ is the effective source transverse velocity. In addition, we have adopted parameters appropriate to Q2237+0305, namely an Einstein ring radius of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}D_{\mathrm{os}}=100R_\mathrm{S}`$, and a total magnification of images unrelated to the caustic of $`A_0=3`$ (see, e.g. Kochanek 2003). For this system, and $`V`$-band observations, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t60\mathrm{days}`$.

In §2 we demonstrated analytically that the light curves of uniform, equal-area elliptical sources with $`e1`$ are degenerate in $`e`$ and $`\varphi `$ , such that one can only measure the combination $`e^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$. In fact, as could have been anticipated from Figure 4, we find numerically that the degeneracy between $`e`$ and $`\varphi `$ exists for arbitrary ellipticities, again provided that the sources are normalized to have equal area. In turn, this implies that the degeneracy between $`e`$ and $`\varphi `$ exists for any source with surface brightness profile that is elliptical and scale-free. The scale-free requirement arises from the fact that the ellipses must have equal-area, which implies different values for the semi-major axes. Therefore the introduction of a scale in the surface brightness profile will break the degeneracy. For accretion disks, the degeneracy translates into a degeneracy between $`i,\varphi `$, and $`R_\nu `$. However, since the profile $`I_\nu (r)`$ of a standard thin disk (Eq. 18) is not scale-free, this degeneracy is not perfect. The severity of the degeneracy is set by the radius of the inner edge of the disk relative to $`R_\nu `$. If $`R_\mathrm{S}/R_\nu 1`$, the surface brightness profile will essentially be scale-free, and the light curves will be degenerate. However, if $`R_\mathrm{S}/R_\nu 1`$, the central hole in the surface brightness profile of the disk creates a feature in the light curve (see Figure 7). Larger inclinations will produce more pronounced features due to this central hole, thus allowing one to distinguish the light curve produced from different inclinations. We note that this degeneracy was likely present in the simulations of Agol & Krolik (1999), although it does not seem to have been explicitly recognized as such.

To crudely quantify the severity of this degeneracy, we have simulated observations of a caustic-crossing event. We adopted the parameters of the light curves shown in Figure 7, namely $`i=30^{}`$, $`\varphi =15^{}`$, $`\theta _\mathrm{E}D_{\mathrm{os}}=100R_\mathrm{S}`$, and $`A_0=3`$. We assume 100 equally-spaced observations from $`10\mathrm{\Delta }t10`$, each yielding photometry in a single band with a fractional flux error of $`2\%`$. For the parameters of Q2237+0305, this corresponds to a sampling interval of $`12\mathrm{days}`$. This sampling interval and photometric error are comparable to that in the OGLE light curve of Q2237+0305 (Woźniak et al., 2000). Figure 8 shows the resulting $`1\sigma `$ confidence regions in the $`i,\varphi `$ plane for the three different light curves. As expected, the degeneracy is most severe for $`R_\nu =25R_\mathrm{S}`$, where inclinations as large as $`80^{}`$ are consistent with the simulated light curve at the $`1\sigma `$ level. This translates into a factor of $`(\mathrm{cos}30^{}/\mathrm{cos}80^{})^{1/2}2`$ uncertainty in $`R_\nu `$. Note that we have fixed all other free parameters at their input values; allowing these parameters to vary would worsen the degeneracy.

Since a measurement of $`R_\nu `$ can be used to constrain the mass of the black hole, it is important to reduce the uncertainty in $`R_\nu `$ if possible. This can be done by obtaining higher-precision observations, although we find that, for the same sampling rate, the precision of the individual measurements must be $`0.2\%`$ to reduce the uncertainty to below $`20\%`$. A more robust way of reducing this uncertainty is to observe at higher frequencies, where the ratio $`R_\mathrm{S}/R_\nu `$ is larger. For example, for $`R_\nu =10R_\mathrm{S}`$, the uncertainty in $`R_\nu `$ is only $`10\%`$. Higher frequencies are desirable for two additional reasons. First, since $`R_\nu `$ is smaller, the source is more compact, which results in a higher magnification as the source crosses the caustic, improving the signal-to-noise ratio. Second, Doppler and relativistic effects are larger for radii closer to the black hole. These effects impose asymmetries in the surface brightness of the disk, which further reduce degeneracies between the parameters, and may even enable a measurement of the black hole spin (Agol & Krolik, 1999).

It is also important to note that we have assumed observations of a single, linear caustic-crossing event. Observations of multiple caustic-crossings, or observations of crossings of more complicated caustic geometries (i.e. parabolic folds, cusps, etc.), would likely remove this degeneracy. However, the additional complexity of such geometries may give rise to other complications and new degeneracies; addressing these issues is beyond the scope of the present paper.

## 4. Summary

Fold caustics are germane to many applications of gravitational microlensing. Previous studies have primarily focused on sources with circular symmetry. Here we have considered microlensing of elliptical sources by fold caustics. We considered only linear fold caustics, which are generally applicable when the size of the source is much smaller than the Einstein ring radius of the system, and prove a useful and analytic approximation to the magnification structure near real fold caustics. The total magnification of the two images produced near such a caustic is proportional to the square-root of the perpendicular distance to the caustic, and thus diverges as a point source approaches the caustic. The chief utility of fold caustics is that this divergence can be used to achieve high spatial resolution and large magnification of faint or otherwise unresolved sources.

By convolving the magnification near a fold caustic with sources of arbitrary ellipticity, we computed the magnification of a source near a fold caustic of scale $`u_r`$ as a function of its ellipticity $`e`$, position angle $`\varphi `$ of the major axis with respect to the caustic normal, area $`\pi \rho ^2`$, and separation from the caustic $`\eta \rho `$. We demonstrated that, for $`e1`$, the deviation due to ellipticity is simply $`(u_r/\rho )^{1/2}e^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi E(\eta )`$, where $`E(\eta )`$ is simple one-parameter function that can be trivially evaluated numerically or expressed in terms of elliptic integrals. The next higher-order corrections to this expression are of order $`e^4`$, and thus it is accurate to $`1\%`$ for $`e0.3`$. From this expression, it is clear that the deviation due to ellipticity vanishes for $`\varphi =45^{}`$, and one can only measure the combination of parameters $`e^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$ from observations of a single fold caustic crossing. For $`e1`$, the root-mean-square light curve deviation due to ellipticity in the range $`1\eta 1.5`$ is $`0.3e^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$. Surprisingly, we found that the deviation due to ellipticity vanishes at some value of $`\varphi 45^{}`$, for all values of $`e`$, with $`\varphi >45^{}`$ for $`e0.3`$ and increasing with increasing ellipticity.

We considered three applications of microlensing of elliptical sources near fold caustics. We first demonstrated that, if most of the microlensing source stars have rotation periods similar to chromospherically active, spotted stars in the bulge, then approximately $`15\%`$ should exhibit light curve deviations due to their oblateness (corresponding to ellipticities $`e0.2`$) that are detectable with current observations. The deviation due to limb-darkening is qualitatively similar to that due to ellipticity, such that a uniform elliptical source with parameters $`e,\varphi `$ can approximately reproduce the light curve of a circular, limb-darkened source with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2e^2\mathrm{cos}2\varphi `$. This may complicate the interpretation of ultra-precise measurements of limb-darkening with microlensing. We then considered the feasibility of detecting the oblateness of close-in, giant, planetary companions to the source-stars of caustic-crossing microlensing events. We found that planets which are sufficiently close to provide a detectable reflected light signal are also generally tidally locked, and therefore rotating too slowly to produce a substantial deviation due to oblateness. If tidal locking can be prevented to preserve an ellipticity of $`e0.2`$ even in the close-in planets, then the oblateness may be observable, especially for fortuitous geometries (with caustic crossing occurring along the direction perpendicular to the major or minor axis). Finally, we considered the resolution of the structure of a quasar accretion disks using microlensing by stars in the foreground lens of a multiply-imaged quasar. We showed that there exists a partial degeneracy between the disk inclination, scale length, and position angle for the orientation of the projected ellipse relative to the caustic. For passbands primarily arising from the outer portion of the disk, this degeneracy can lead to a factor of two uncertainty in the determination the disk scale length, which translates directly into an uncertainty in the black-hole mass, in the standard thin accretion disk model. Higher-frequency or higher-precision observations can reduce this uncertainty.

Work for BSG was supported by a Menzel Fellowship from the Harvard College Observatory.