English

Pseudo Elliptical Lensing Mass Model: Application to the NFW Mass Distribution

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v2

Abstract

We introduce analytical expressions for a pseudo fully analytical elliptical projected Navarro, Frenk & White (NFW) mass profile to be used in lensing equations. We propose a formalism that incorporates the ellipticity into the expression for the lens potential, producing a pseudo-elliptical mass distribution. This approach can be implemented to any circular mass profile for which the projected mass profile Sigma(r) and the deflection angle profile alpha(r) both have analytical expressions; however the potential does not necessarily need to take an analytical form. We apply this new formalism to the NFW mass distribution and study how well this pseudo-elliptical NFW model describes an elliptical mass distribution. We conclude that the pseudo-elliptical NFW model is a good description of elliptical mass distributions provided that the ellipticity of the projected mass distribution is <~ 0.4, although with a slightly boxy distribution.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0112138,
  title  = {Pseudo Elliptical Lensing Mass Model: Application to the NFW Mass Distribution},
  author = {G. Golse and J. -P. Kneib},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0112138},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, 8 figures. Revised version