Adaptive Contouring – an efficient way to calculate microlensing light curves of extended sources

The availability of a robust and efficient routine for calculating light curves of a finite source magnified due to bending its light by the gravitational field of an intervening binary lens is essential for determining the characteristics of planets in such microlensing events, as well as for modelling stellar lens binaries and resolving the brightness profile of the source star. However, the presence of extended caustics and the fact that the images of the source star cannot be determined analytically while their number depends on the source position (relative to the lens system), makes such a task difficult in general. Combining the advantages of several earlier approaches, an adaptive contouring algorithm is presented, which only relies on a small number of simple rules and operations on the adaptive search grid. By using the parametric representation of critical curves and caustics found by Erdl & Schneider (1993), seed solutions to the adaptive grid are found, which ensures that no images or holes are missed.