English

Cosmography with the Double Source Plane Strong Gravitational Lens AGEL150745+052256

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2025-04-02 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

Strong gravitational lenses with two background sources at widely separated redshifts are a powerful and independent probe of cosmological parameters. We can use these systems, known as Double-Source-Plane Lenses (DSPLs), to measure the ratio (β\beta) of angular-diameter distances of the sources, which is sensitive to the matter density (Ωm\Omega_m) and the equation-of-state parameter for dark-energy (ww). However, DSPLs are rare and require high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy for detection, lens modeling, and measuring β\beta. Here we report only the second DSPL ever used to measure cosmological parameters. We model the DSPL AGEL150745+052256 from the ASTRO 3D Galaxy Evolution with Lenses (AGEL) survey using HST/WFC3 imaging and Keck/KCWI spectroscopy. The spectroscopic redshifts for the deflector and two sources in AGEL1507 are zdefl=0.594z_{\rm defl}=0.594, zS1=2.163z_{\rm S1}=2.163, and zS2=2.591z_{\rm S2}=2.591. We measure a stellar velocity dispersion of σobs=109±27\sigma_{\rm obs}=109 \pm 27 km s1^{-1} for the nearer source. Using σobs\sigma_{\rm obs} for the main deflector (from literature) and S1, we test the robustness of our DSPL model. We measure β=0.9530.010+0.008\beta=0.953^{+0.008}_{-0.010} for AGEL1507 and infer Ωm=0.330.23+0.38\Omega_{\rm m}=0.33^{+0.38}_{-0.23} for Λ\LambdaCDM cosmology. Combining AGEL1507 with the published model of the Jackpot lens improves the precision on Ωm\Omega_{\rm m} (Λ\LambdaCDM) and w (wCDM) by 10%\sim 10 \%. The inclusion of DSPLs significantly improves the constraints when combined with Plancks cosmic microwave background observations, enhancing precision on w by 30%30 \%. This paper demonstrates the constraining power of DSPLs and their complementarity to other standard cosmological probes. Tighter future constraints from larger DSPL samples discovered from ongoing and forthcoming large-area sky surveys would provide insights into the nature of dark energy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.00656,
  title  = {Cosmography with the Double Source Plane Strong Gravitational Lens AGEL150745+052256},
  author = {Nandini Sahu and Anowar J. Shajib and Kim-Vy Tran and Hannah Skobe and Sunny Rhoades and Tucker Jones and Karl Glazebrook and Thomas E. Collett and Sherry H. Suyu and Tania M. Barone and Keerthi Vasan G. C. and Duncan J. Bowden and Daniel Ballard and Glenn G. Kacprzak and Sarah M. Sweet and Geraint F. Lewis and Themiya Nanayakkara},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.00656},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

19 pages, 10 figures, Submitted for publication to the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ)