Wambsganss Joachim
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany.
Living Rev Relativ. 1998;1(1):12. doi: 10.12942/lrr-1998-12. Epub 1998 Nov 2.
Deflection of light by gravity was predicted by General Relativity and observationally confirmed in 1919. In the following decades, various aspects of the gravitational lens effect were explored theoretically. Among them were: the possibility of multiple or ring-like images of background sources, the use of lensing as a gravitational telescope on very faint and distant objects, and the possibility of determining Hubble's constant with lensing. It is only relatively recently, (after the discovery of the first doubly imaged quasar in 1979), that gravitational lensing has became an observational science. Today lensing is a booming part of astrophysics. In addition to multiply-imaged quasars, a number of other aspects of lensing have been discovered: For example, giant luminous arcs, quasar microlensing, Einstein rings, galactic microlensing events, arclets, and weak gravitational lensing. At present, literally hundreds of individual gravitational lens phenomena are known. Although still in its childhood, lensing has established itself as a very useful astrophysical tool with some remarkable successes. It has contributed significant new results in areas as different as the cosmological distance scale, the large scale matter distribution in the universe, mass and mass distribution of galaxy clusters, the physics of quasars, dark matter in galaxy halos, and galaxy structure. Looking at these successes in the recent past we predict an even more luminous future for gravitational lensing.
Supplementary material is available for this article at 10.12942/lrr-1998-12.
广义相对论预言了光在引力作用下的偏折，并于1919年得到观测证实。在接下来的几十年里，人们从理论上探索了引力透镜效应的各个方面。其中包括：背景源出现多个或环状图像的可能性、将透镜效应用作观测极其微弱和遥远天体的引力望远镜、以及利用透镜效应测定哈勃常数的可能性。直到相对较近的时候（1979年发现首个双像类星体之后），引力透镜效应才成为一门观测科学。如今，透镜效应是天体物理学中蓬勃发展的一个领域。除了多重成像类星体之外，还发现了透镜效应的许多其他方面：例如，巨大的亮弧、类星体微透镜、爱因斯坦环、星系微透镜事件、小弧以及弱引力透镜效应。目前，已知的单个引力透镜现象实际上有数百个。尽管仍处于起步阶段，但透镜效应已成为一种非常有用的天体物理工具，并取得了一些显著成果。它在宇宙学距离尺度、宇宙中大规模物质分布、星系团的质量和质量分布、类星体物理学、星系晕中的暗物质以及星系结构等不同领域都取得了重要的新成果。回顾近期的这些成就，我们预测引力透镜效应的未来将更加辉煌。
本文的补充材料可在10.12942/lrr - 1998 - 12获取。
