Related papers: Arc Statistics
Arc statistics is known to be a powerful cosmological tool. Numerical lensing simulations show that orders of magnitude differences in the number of {\em giant} arcs on the whole sky are expected in different cosmological models. In this…
Number counts and redshift distribution of gravitational arcs are computed in the field of massive clusters of galaxies to probe the universe at high redshift. Using an accurate modelling for the cluster mass distribution and a model for…
We study the strong gravitational lensing properties of galaxy clusters obtained from N-body simulations with standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. We have used the 32 most massive clusters from a simulation at various redshifts and ray-traced…
For more than a decade now, it has been controversial whether or not the high rate of giant gravitational arcs and the largest observed Einstein radii are consistent with the standard cosmological model. Recent studies indicate that mergers…
The frequency with which background galaxies appear as long arcs as a result of gravitational lensing by foreground clusters of galaxies has recently been found to be a very sensitive probe of cosmological models by Bartelmann et al.…
The statistics of gravitational arcs in galaxy clusters is a powerful probe of cluster structure and may provide complementary cosmological constraints. Despite recent progresses, discrepancies still remain among modelling and observations…
The frequency of giant arcs - highly distorted and strongly gravitationally lensed background galaxies - is a powerful test for cosmological models. Previous comparisons of arc statistics for the currently favored concordance cosmological…
We construct a sample of numerical models for clusters of galaxies and employ these to investigate their capability of imaging background sources into long arcs. Emphasis is laid on the statistics of these arcs. We study cross sections for…
The statistics of gravitationally lensed arcs was recognised earlier as a potentially powerful cosmological probe. However, while fully numerical models find orders of magnitude difference between the arc probabilities in different…
Galaxy clusters as gravitational lenses play a unique role in astrophysics and cosmology: they permit mapping the dark matter distribution on a range of scales; they reveal the properties of high and intermediate redshift background…
We study the impact of merger events on the strong lensing properties of galaxy clusters. Previous lensing simulations were not able to resolve dynamical time scales of cluster lenses, which arise on time scales which are of order a Gyr. In…
We report on the first results of an imaging survey to detect strong gravitational lensing targeting the richest clusters selected from the photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with follow-up deep imaging observations…
We use semi-analytic modelling of the galaxy-cluster population and its strong lensing efficiency to explore how the expected abundance of large gravitational arcs on the sky depends on $\sigma_8$. Our models take all effects into account…
The next generation of large sky photometric surveys will finally be able to use arc statistics as a cosmological probe. Here we present the first of a series of papers on this topic. In particular, we study how arc counts are sensitive to…
Strong gravitational lensing provides unique opportunities to investigate the mass distribution at the cores of galaxy clusters and to study high redshift galaxies. Using $94$ strong lensing models of $74$ cluster fields from the…
We compare the statistical properties of giant gravitationally lensed arcs produced in matched simulated and observed cluster samples. The observed sample consists of 10 X-ray selected clusters at redshifts z ~ 0.2 imaged with HST by Smith…
Strong lensing has developed into an important astrophysical tool for probing both cosmology and galaxies (their structure, formation, and evolution). Using the gravitational lensing theory and cluster mass distribution model, we try to…
We investigate how ellipticity, asymmetries and substructures separately affect the ability of galaxy clusters to produce strong lensing events, i.e. gravitational arcs, and how they influence the arc morphologies and fluxes. This is…
Galaxy shapes are not randomly oriented, rather they are statistically aligned in a way that can depend on formation environment, history and galaxy type. Studying the alignment of galaxies can therefore deliver important information about…
We study the arc statistics of gravitational lensing generated by dark matter halos in order to probe their density profile. We characterize the halo profile by two parameters, the inner slope of the central cusp $\alpha$, and the median…