Related papers: Lensing degeneracies and mass substructure
While gravitational lens inversion holds great promise to reveal the structure of the light-deflecting mass distribution, both light and dark, the existence of various kinds of degeneracies implies that care must be taken when interpreting…
Mass determinations from gravitational lensing shear and the higher order estimator flexion are both subject to the mass sheet degeneracy. Mass sheet degeneracy refers to a transformation that leaves the reduced shear and flexion invariant.…
Multiple image gravitational lens systems, and especially quads are invaluable in determining the amount and distribution of mass in galaxies. This is usually done by mass modeling using parametric or free-form methods. An alternative way…
In gravitational lensing, the Mass-Sheet Transformation (MST)-or mass-sheet degeneracy-leaves image positions unchanged while scaling magnifications and time delays. The transformation scales the lens mass distribution and superposes a…
A standard method to study the mass distribution in galaxy clusters is through strong lensing of background galaxies in which the positions of multiple images of the same source constrain the surface mass distribution of the cluster.…
Gravitational lensing offers a competitive method to measure $H_0$ with the goal of 1% precision. A major obstacle comes in the form of lensing degeneracies, such as the mass sheet degeneracy (MSD), which make it possible for a family of…
Gravitational lensing is the phenomenon arising when light rays are deflected by the mass between the source and the observer. Largely magnified and highly distorted images of background galaxies are formed by these angular deflections if…
In the coming years, strong gravitational lens discoveries are expected to increase in frequency by two orders of magnitude. Lens-modelling techniques are being developed to prepare for the coming massive influx of new lens data, and blind…
We consider several aspects of the generalized multi-plane gravitational lens theory, in which light rays from a distant source are affected by several main deflectors, and in addition by the tidal gravitational field of the large-scale…
A degeneracy in strong lens model is shown analytically. The observed time delays and quasar image positions might {\it not} uniquely determine the concentration and the extent of the lens galaxy halo mass distribution. Simply hardwiring…
We investigate the impact of higher-order gravitational lens properties and properties of the background source on our approach to directly infer local lens properties from observables in multiple images of strong gravitationally lensed…
The information about the mass density of galaxy clusters provided by the gravitational lens effect has inspired many inversion techniques. In this article, updates to the previously introduced method in Grale are described, and explored in…
Gravitational lensing offers unique opportunities to learn about the astrophysical origin of distant sources, the abundance of intervening objects acting as lenses, and gravity and cosmology in general. However, all this information can…
Double-plane gravitational lensing is a rare but increasingly observed phenomenon in which the light from a distant source is lensed by two foreground objects at different redshifts. Such systems can be used to provide simultaneous…
Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for constraining substructure in the mass distribution of galaxies, be it from the presence of dark matter sub-halos or due to physical mechanisms affecting the baryons throughout galaxy evolution.…
If an extended source, such as a galaxy, is gravitationally lensed by a massive object in the foreground, the lensing distorts the observed image. It is straightforward to simulate what the observed image would be for a particular lens and…
We develop an algorithm for the reconstruction of the two-dimensional mass distribution of a gravitational lens from the observable distortion of background galaxies. From the measured reduced shear, the lens mapping is obtained, from which…
We discuss a simple parameter degeneracy in lens models which follows directly from the well known mass sheet degeneracy and prevents determining the radial mass distribution from lensing alone for many systems. For cosmological important…
The frequency and effects of multiple weak deflections in galaxy-galaxy lensing are investigated via Monte Carlo simulations. The lenses in the simulations are galaxies with known redshifts and known rest-frame blue luminosities. The…
Lens magnification by galaxy clusters induces characteristic spatial variations in the number counts of background sources, amplifying their observed fluxes and expanding the area of sky, the net effect of which, known as magnification…