Hubble Imaging Excludes Cosmic String Lens
Astrophysics
2009-11-11 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
The galaxy image pair CSL-1 has been a leading candidate for a cosmic string lens. High quality imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope presented here show that it is not a lens but a pair of galaxies. The galaxies show different orientations of their principal axes, not consistent with any lens model. We present a new direct test of the straight-string lens model, using a displaced difference of the image from itself to exclude CSL-1 at high confidence.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0603838,
title = {Hubble Imaging Excludes Cosmic String Lens},
author = {Eric Agol and Craig J. Hogan and Richard M. Plotkin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0603838},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
3 pages, 2 figures. Higher quality versions of figures are available online. Bibliography modified. Accepted as a brief report to Phys. Rev. D