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"A new parameter space study of cosmological microlensing on GPUs"
Dr. Georgios Varnardos,
Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia
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When:  Wednesday 5 December 2012 at 13:00
Where: 2nd Floor Seminar Room

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Abstract:

Cosmological gravitational microlensing is a useful technique for understanding the structure of the inner parts of a quasar, especially the accretion disk and the central supermassive black hole. So far, most of the cosmological microlensing studies have focused on single objects from the ~90 currently known lensed quasars. However, present and future planned all-sky surveys (e.g. LSST) are expected to discover thousands of new lensed systems. The advent of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general computations in astronomy has enabled the theoretical study of tens of thousands of microlensing magnification patterns. I present results from a first extensive exploration of microlensing parameter space, as part of the GPU-Enabled High-Resolution Micro-Lensing parameter survey (GERLUMPH). In particular, I examine statistical properties of magnification maps at high resolution across most of the convergence and shear parameter space of interest. Finally, I present the current status and the future goals of GERLUMPH. 
All of the simulations have been carried out on gSTAR, the GPU-Supercomputer for Theoretical Astrophysics Research at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

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