Finding Gravitational Lenses With X-rays

Abstract

There are $\sim 1$, 0.1 and 0.01 gravitationally lensed X-ray sources per square degree with soft X-ray fluxes exceeding $10^{-15}, 10^{-14}$ and $10^{-13} ergs/s cm^{-2}$ respectively. These sources will be detected serendipitously with the Chandra X-ray Observatory at a rate of 1--3 lenses per year of high resolution imaging. The low detection rate is due to the small area over which the HRC and ACIS cameras have the $<1\farcs5$ FWHM resolution necessary to find gravitational lenses produced by galaxies. Deep images of rich clusters at intermediate redshifts should yield one wide separation ($\Delta\theta \gtorder 5\farcs0$) multiply-imaged background X-ray source for every $\sim 10$, 30 and 300 clusters imaged to the same flux limits.