Related papers: The Effect of Environment on Shear in Strong Gravi…
Strong gravitational lensing provides an independent measurement of the Hubble parameter ($H_0$). One remaining systematic is a bias from the additional mass due to a galaxy group at the lens redshift or along the sightline. We quantify…
In this paper, we study gravitational lensing by groups of galaxies. Since groups are abundant and therefore have a large covering fraction on the sky, lensing by groups is likely to be very important observationally. Besides, it has…
We use publicly available N-body simulations and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to estimate the levels of external shear due to structure near the lens in gravitational lens systems. We also describe two selection effects,…
We predict how the observed variations in galaxy populations with environment affect the number and properties of gravitational lenses in different environments. Two trends dominate: lensing strongly favors early-type galaxies, which tend…
(Abridged) We present the first results from our spectroscopic survey of the environments of strong gravitational lenses. The lens galaxy belongs to a poor group of galaxies in six of the eight systems in our sample. We discover three new…
We study the impact of lens galaxy environments on the image separation distribution of lensed quasars. We account for both environmental convergence and shear, using a joint distribution derived from galaxy formation models calibrated by…
Matter near a gravitational lens galaxy or projected along the line of sight (LOS) can affect strong lensing observables by more than contemporary measurement errors. We simulate lens fields with realistic three-dimensional mass…
Using measured tangential shear profiles and number counts of massive elliptical galaxies, the halo occupation distribution of strong lensing galaxies is constrained. The resulting HOD is then used to populate an N-body simulation with lens…
Many strong gravitational lenses lie in complex environments, such as poor groups of galaxies, that significantly bias conclusions from lens analyses. We are undertaking a photometric survey of all known galaxy-mass strong lenses to…
While many strong gravitational lens galaxies are suspected to lie in groups or clusters of galaxies, environmental effects in lens models are often unconstrained and sometimes ignored. We show that this creates significant biases in a…
Weak lensing is an important technique to determine the masses of galaxy groups. However, the distortion imprint on the shape of the background galaxies is affected by all the mass content along the line-of-sight. Using COSMOS shear mock…
Inhomogeneities along the line of sight in strong gravitational lensing distort the images produced, in an effect called shear. If measurable, this shear may provide independent constraints on cosmological parameters, complementary to…
We discuss strong gravitational lensing by multiple objects along any line of sight. The probability for strong gravitational lensing by more than one lens is small, but a number of strong lens systems in which more than one separate lens…
We present an end-to-end methodology to measure the effects of weak lensing on individual galaxy-galaxy systems exploiting their kinematic information. Using this methodology, we have measured a shear signal from the velocity fields of 18…
Only galaxies bright enough and large enough to be unambiguously identified and measured are included in galaxy surveys used to estimate cosmic shear. We demonstrate that because gravitational lensing can scatter galaxies across the…
Among the 100 strong lens candidates found in the COSMOS field, 20 with redshifts in the range [0.34,1.13], feature multiple images of background sources. Using the multi-wavelength coverage of the field and its spectroscopic follow-up, we…
A large fraction of known galaxy-lens systems require a component of external shear to explain the observed image geometries. In most cases, this shear can be attributed to a nearby group of galaxies. We discuss how the dark-matter mass…
While most strong-gravitational-lensing systems may be roughly modelled by a single massive object between the source and the observer, in the details all the structures near the light path contribute to the observed images. These…
The analysis of strong lensing images usually involves an external convergence and shear, which are meant to model the effect of perturbations along the line of sight, on top of the main lens. Such a description of line-of-sight…
In a number of multiply imaged quasar systems, a significant contribution to the lensing potential is provided by groups and clusters of galaxies associated with the primary lens. As part of an ongoing effort to gather observational data on…