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Session 27 - Gravitational Lensing & Dark Matter.
Oral session, Monday, January 13
Frontenac Ballroom,
Every astrophysical object (dark or not) is a gravitational lens, as well as a receiver/observer of the light from sources lensed by other objects in its neighborhood. For a given pair of source and lens, there is a thin on-axis tubelike volumn behind the lens in which the radiation flux from the source is greatly increased due to gravitational lensing. Any objects which pass through such a thin tube will experience strong bursts of radiation, i.e., Extreme Gravitational Lensing Events (EGLEs). We have studied the physics and statistics of EGLEs.
EGLEs may have interesting astrophysical effects, such as the destruction of dust grains, ignition of masers, etc. Here we illustrate the possible astrophysical effects of EGLEs with one specific example,the destruction of dust grains in globular clusters.
