Astrophysical Studies of Gravitational Lenses, Faint Galaxies, Active Galactic Nuclei, and Pulsars

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AST 95-29170 PI: Roger Blandford Astrophysical Studies of Gravitational Lenses, Faint Galaxies, Active Galactic Nuclei, and Pulsars. Four subject areas are included in this proposal. The first is gravitational lenses. A survey for multiply-imaged compact radio sources is hoped to discover some good cases with well-understood optical configurations that can measure the Hubble constant from time delays between variations in the multiple images. It is also proposed to explore the possibility of measuring the masses of distant faint galaxies through detecting their mutual weak distortion and by performing imaging spectroscopy on giant arcs formed by rich clusters. Distant faint galaxies are the subject of the second investigation. New data from the Keck and Palomar telescopes will be obtained and applied to learning the distances and fundamental properties of these galaxies. .....The third area is active galactic nuclei, with studies ranging from the theoretical question of the causal behavior of a black hole magnetosphere to analysis of broad absorption and emission lines in quasars. New computational capabilities allow 3-D magnetohydrodynamic simulations to explore the evolution of magnetic field in a giant radio- emitting lobe. The last investigation will be the physics and observational implications of a model of radio pulsar emission that relies on cyclotron-Cerenkov maser action.