English

MrMARTIAN: A Multi-resolution Mass Reconstruction Algorithm Combining Free-form and Analytic Components

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-01-13 v4

Abstract

We present MrMARTIAN{\tt MrMARTIAN} (Multi-resolution MAximum-entropy Reconstruction Technique Integrating Analytic Node), a new hybrid strong lensing (SL) modeling algorithm. By incorporating physically motivated analytic nodes into the free-form method MARS{\tt MARS}, MrMARTIAN{\tt MrMARTIAN} enables stable and flexible mass reconstructions while mitigating oversmoothing in the inner mass profile. Its multi-resolution framework increases the degrees of freedom in regions with denser strong lensing constraints, thereby enhancing computational efficiency for a fixed number of free parameters. We evaluate the performance of MrMARTIAN{\tt MrMARTIAN} using publicly available simulated SL data and find that it consistently outperforms MARS{\tt MARS} in recovering both mass and magnification. In particular, it delivers significantly more stable reconstructions when multiple images are sparsely distributed. Finally, we apply MrMARTIAN{\tt MrMARTIAN} to the galaxy cluster MACS J0416.1-2403, incorporating two analytic nodes centered on the northeastern and southwestern BCGs. Our mass model, constrained by 412 multiple images, achieves an image-plane rms scatter of ~0".11, the smallest to date for this dataset.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.13262,
  title  = {MrMARTIAN: A Multi-resolution Mass Reconstruction Algorithm Combining Free-form and Analytic Components},
  author = {Sangjun Cha and M. James Jee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.13262},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

16 pages, 10 figures. Published in ApJ

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:55:29.389Z