Effects of Kerr strong gravity on quasar x-ray microlensing

Recent quasar microlensing observations have constrained the sizes of X-ray emission regions to be within about 10 gravitational radii of the central supermassive black hole. Therefore, the X-ray emission from lensed quasars is first strongly lensed by the black hole before it is lensed by the foreground galaxy and star fields. We present a scheme that combines the initial strong lensing of a Kerr black hole with standard linearized microlensing by intervening stars. We find that X-ray microlensed light curves incorporating Kerr strong gravity can differ significantly from standard curves. The amplitude of the fluctuations in the light curves can increase or decrease by ∼0.65-0.75 mag by including Kerr strong gravity. Larger inclination angles give larger amplitude fluctuations in the microlensing light curves. Consequently, current X-ray microlensing observations can under or overestimate the sizes of the X-ray emission regions. We estimate this bias using a simple metric based on the amplitude of magnitude fluctuations. The half-light radius of the X-ray emission region can be underestimated by up to ∼50% or overestimated by up to ∼20% depending on the spin of the black hole, the emission profile, and the inclination angle of the observer. Underestimates were found in most situations we investigated. The only exception was for a disk with large spin and a radially flat emission profile, observed nearly face-on. We thus conclude that more accurate microlensing size constraints should be obtainable by including Kerr lensing. We also find that the caustic crossing time can differ by months when Kerr strong gravity is included. A simultaneous monitoring of gravitational lensed quasars in both X-ray and optical bands with densely sampled X-ray light curves should reveal this feature. We conclude that it should be possible to constrain important parameters such as inclination angles and black hole spins from combined Kerr and microlensing effects.