"Worst-Case" Micro-Lensing in the Identification and Modeling of Lensed Quasars

Although micro-lensing of macro-lensed quasars and supernovae provides unique opportunities for several kinds of investigations, it can add unwanted and sometimes substantial noise. While micro-lensing flux anomalies may be safely ignored for some observations, they severely limit others. “Worst-case” estimates can inform the decision whether or not to undertake an extensive examination of micro-lensing scenarios. Here, we report “worst-case” micro-lensing uncertainties for point sources lensed by singular isothermal potentials, parameterized by a convergence equal to the shear and by the stellar fraction. The results can be straightforwardly applied to non-isothermal potentials utilizing the mass sheet degeneracy. We use micro-lensing maps to compute fluctuations in image micro-magnifications and estimate the stellar fraction at which the fluctuations are greatest for a given convergence. We find that the worst-case fluctuations happen at a stellar fraction ${\kappa }_{\star }=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\mid }{\mu }_{macro}\mathrm{\mid }}$. For macro-minima, fluctuations in both magnification and demagnification appear to be bounded ($1.5>\Delta m>-1.3$,where$\Delta m$ is magnitude relative to the average macro-magnification). Magnifications for macro-saddles are bounded as well ($\mathrm{\Delta }m>-1.7$). In contrast, demagnifications for macro-saddles appear to have unbounded fluctuations as $1\mathrm{/}{\mu }_{macro}\to 0$ and ${\kappa }_{\star }\to 0$.