A simple method to determine the time delays in presence of microlensing: application to HE 0435-1223 and PG1115+080

Abstract

A method for determining the time delays in gravitationally lensed quasars is proposed, which offers a simple and transparent procedure to mitigate the effects of microlensing. The method is based on fundamental properties of representation of quadratically integrable functions by their expansions in orthogonal polynomials series. The method was tested on the artificial light curves simulated for the Time Delay Challenge campaign TDC0. The new estimates of the time delays in the gravitationally lensed quasars HE 0435-1223 and PG 1115+080 are obtained and compared with the results reported by other authors earlier.