Astrophysical Applications of Gravitational Lensing (International Astronomical Union Symposium No 173)

Abstract

This book is one of the monographs in the regular series published by Kluwer Academic under the supervision of the International Astronomical Union. The content of the monograph is the proceedings of the 173rd Symposium of the IAU held in Melbourne, Australia, 9 - 14 July 1995. The book consists of 11 chapters, with a preface written by E Turner and R Webster, a summary written by W Press, and appendices. Review and example problem papers are written by other well known authors who are distinguished scientists involved in gravitational lens investigations. The scope of these proceedings is very wide. Gravitational lens investigations now cover the whole range of cosmology and astrophysics. As a result a certain problem always emerges; how should the papers be organized? The editors solved the problem in the natural way; they ordered the papers in accordance with decreasing scales. The book begins with papers devoted to lensing phenomena on scales comparable with the size of the horizon of our Universe and finishes with papers dealing with galactic scales. In accordance with this layout, the first and second chapters are devoted to measuring the main cosmological parameters such as the Hubble constant, the density parameter within the horizon scale and (cosmological constant) of our Universe via gravitational lensing phenomena. The next chapters describe applications of gravitational lensing to large-scale structure, galactic clusters and Ly- forest, down to the galaxies and our own Galaxy. They include a discussion about dark matter in clusters of galaxies and in individual galaxies. Special attention is paid to weak gravitational lensing which is now one of the promising tools for mapping dark matter in the Universe. Chapter 7 is completely devoted to the discussion of microlensing in our Galaxy. The main collaborations present their observational results and discuss the interpretation of these results in the light of the dark component of our Galaxy. The final chapters are devoted to astronomical surveys of gravitational lensing in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum and the search for exotic phenomena such as cosmic strings. This monograph presents the current state of gravitational lensing problems, both investigations and applications of gravitational lensing to different fields of modern astrophysics and cosmology. It contains a very useful summary of gravitational lensing data including observational data and bibliographic reference data. It is a good reference book on the current states of the art of lensing investigation and application.