Luminosity variation in (de)focusing microlensing

Abstract

The luminosity variation of a stellar source due to the gravitational microlensing effect can be considered also if the light rays are defocused (instead of focused) toward the observer. In this case, we should detect a gap instead of a peak in the light curve of the source. Actually, we describe how the phenomenon depends on the relative position of source and lens with respect to the observer: if the lens is between, we have focusing, if the lens is behind, we have defocusing. It is shown that the number of events with predicted gaps is equal to the number of events with peaks in the light curves.