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arXiv · 2509.10674

Using white dwarf lensing to resolve accretion flows

Sophie L. Newman·Matthew J. Middleton·Adam McMaster
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Abstract

Microlensing is one of the most powerful tools for probing the nature of dark halo objects and the sources they lens. As our nearest massive galaxy, M31 provides a rich source population with many potential lenses in its halo crossing our field of view at any one time. In this paper we explore the probability that X-ray sources in M31 will be lensed by white dwarfs in M31's halo. We find an expected lensing rate of 2.6/year within the mean archival Swift XRT field-of-view, and 6.3/year for the whole galaxy. For X-ray emitting sources harboring accreting neutron stars and black holes, we find that microlensing offers a unique opportunity to constrain the properties of the inner accretion flow. Our results demonstrate that it is feasible to recover both the spin of the black hole and the temperature profile of the accretion disk by discerning their effects upon the profile of the microlensing magnification. We show that these parameters have a significant effect on the shape of the light curve, with the effect of spin being more pronounced at smaller impact parameters and higher energies, while the effect of the temperature profile is larger at lower energies and larger impact parameters. This suggests that multi-band observations of a single lensing event could be used to robustly constrain both parameters.

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Sophie L. Newman, Matthew J. Middleton, Adam McMaster. 2025-09-12. Using white dwarf lensing to resolve accretion flows. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10674

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