Microlensing of circumstellar envelopes. I. Simplified considerations for diagnosing radial and azimuthal flow

This paper presents first results on the line profile shapes from a circumstellar envelope in bulk motion as modi- fied by a microlensing event. Only geometrically and optically thin spherical shells in uniform expansion or rotation are consid- ered here so as to emphasise the information content available in the profile shapes. In particular it is demonstrated that for the case of expansion, the line emission can increase by significant factors and the time variation of the profile shape is symmetric about line centre. For uniform rotation the line emission also in- creases significantly, but the time evolution of the profile shape is distinctly asymmetric. Thus, microlensing is seen to yield in- formation about the velocity field in the extended envelope. We elaborate on (a) the observational advantages of tailoring mi- crolensing programs toward detecting extended circumstellar envelopes, (b) the use of multiline observations to infer other properties of the envelopes, such as the ionization stratification, (c) the use of the continuum excess emission at infrared wave- lengths as a means of probing the envelope structure, and (d) the use of polarisation for constraining the properties of "clumpy" winds.