Gravitational Lensing and Microlensing in Clusters: Clusters as Dark Matter Telescopes

Abstract: Gravitational lensing is brightening of background objects due to deflection of light by foreground sources. Rich clusters of galaxies are very effective lenses because they are centrally concentrated. Such natural Gravitational Telescopes provide us with strongly magnified galaxies at high redshifts otherwise too faint to be detected or analyzed. With a lensing boost, we can study galaxies shining at the end of the `Dark Ages'. We propose to exploit the opportunity provided by the large field of view and depth, to search for sources magnified by foreground clusters in the vicinity of the cluster critical curves, where enhancements can be of several tens in brightness. Another aspect is microlensing (ML), where we would like to continue our survey of a number of Galactic globular clusters over time-scales of weeks to years to search for ML events from planets to hypothesized central intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH).