Reconstruction of the brightness distribution across a stellar disk from gravitational lensing caustic passage observations

Abstract

This paper describes a method for analyzing observations of the passage of a star through a gravitational lensing caustic that enables the derivation of information about the brightness distribution across the stellar disk without knowledge of the lens parameters. The ill-posed inverse problem of reconstructing a one-dimensional strip brightness distribution across the stellar disk is solved using a regularization method, taking into account the non-negative nature of this function. Assuming the source is circularly symmetric, the search for the radial brightness distribution is carried out over compact sets of upward-convex, non-negative functions or functions that do not grow with distance from the stellar center. The method is used to analyze the gravitational microlensing event MACHO 98-SMC-1, of a star in the Small Magellanic Cloud, obtained by the PLANET international group. The resulting brightness distribution is compared with computations of limb darkening for model stellar atmospheres.