English

Cosmological Constraints from the double source plane lens SDSSJ0946+1006

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2014-09-15 v2 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present constraints on the equation of state of dark energy, ww, and the total matter density, ΩM\Omega_{\mathrm{M}}, derived from the double-source-plane strong lens SDSSJ0946+1006, the first cosmological measurement with a galaxy-scale double-source-plane lens. By modelling the primary lens with an elliptical power-law mass distribution, and including perturbative lensing by the first source, we are able to constrain the cosmological scaling factor in this system to be β1=1.404±0.016\beta^{-1}=1.404 \pm 0.016, which implies ΩM=0.330.26+0.33\Omega_{\mathrm{M}}= 0.33_{-0.26}^{+0.33} for a flat Λ\Lambda cold dark matter (Λ\LambdaCDM) cosmology. Combining with a cosmic microwave background prior from Planck, we find ww = 1.170.21+0.20-1.17^{+0.20}_{-0.21} assuming a flat wwCDM cosmology. This inference shifts the posterior by 1σ{\sigma} and improves the precision by 30 per cent with respect to Planck alone, and demonstrates the utility of combining simple, galaxy-scale multiple-source-plane lenses with other cosmological probes to improve precision and test for residual systematic biases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.5278,
  title  = {Cosmological Constraints from the double source plane lens SDSSJ0946+1006},
  author = {Thomas E. Collett and Matthew W. Auger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.5278},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

9 Pages, 7 Figures. Updated version as published in MNRAS