Gravitational Microlensing as a probe of the Electron Scattering Region
  in Q2237+0305
  Recent observations have provided strong evidence for the presence of an
Electron Scattering Region (ESR) within the central regions of AGNs. This is
responsible for reprocessing emission from the accretion disk into polarised
radiation. The geometry of this scattering region is, however, poorly
constrained. In this paper, we consider the influence of gravitational
microlensing on polarised emission from the ESR in the quadruply imaged quasar,
Q2237+0305, demonstrating how correlated features in the resultant light curve
variations can determine both the size and orientation of the scattering
region. This signal is due to differential magnification between
perpendicularly polarised views of the ESR, and is clearest for a small ESR
width and a large ESR radius. Cross- and auto-correlation measures appear to be
independent of lens image shear and convergence parameters, making it ideal to
investigate ESR features. As with many microlensing experiments, the time-scale
for variability, being of order decades to centuries, is impractically long.
However, with a polarization filter oriented appropriately with respect to the
path that the quasar takes across the caustic structure, the ESR diameter and
radius can be estimated from the auto- and cross-correlation of polarized light
curves on much shorter time-scales.
